“A story conducted by the time of a clock and calendars alone would be a story not of human beings but of mechanical toys.”

“When many story-tellers occupy themselves with a social world which offers no great variety of lively action, their stories will probably resemble one another as to many of the major incidents, and if they draw on these limited resources like spend thrifts such resemblances will be inevitable--and therefore not significant.”

“The sole agents, indeed, in the action of her novels are individual human beings. And the comedy is the outcome of their making fools of themselves and of one another.”

“In Jane Austen it was the critical faculty that would not be quieted; and that faculty in her, played on men and women.”

“Charlotte Palmer is no sillier than Harriet Smith; and yet, how intolerable we should find it to see and hear as much of Charlotte as we do of Harriet! And would Miss Bates have been endurable if she had been presented in the mood and manners of Sense and Sensibility? ”

“As for Elizabeth Bennet, our chief reason for accepting her point of view as a reflection of her author's is the impression that she bears of sympathy between them--an impression of which almost every reader would be sensible, even if it had not the explicit confirmation of Jane Austen's letters. Yet, as she is presented to us in Pride and Prejudice, she is but a partial and sometimes perverse observer. ”

“A clever girl may pass through the phase of foolish miss on the way to sensible woman.”