Memoir of Jane Austen Quotes

“All persons who undertake to narrate from hearsay things which are supposed to have taken place before they were born are liable to error, and are apt to call in imagination to the aid of memory: and hence it arises that many a fancy piece has been substituted for genuine history.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“Her reward was not to be the quick return of the cornfield, but the slow growth of the tree which is to endure to another generation”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“on being asked by her attendants whether there was anything that she wanted, her reply was, ‘Nothing but death.’  These were her last words.  In quietness and peace she breathed her last on the morning of July 18, 1817.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“She was very fond of Emma, but did not reckon on her being a general favourite; for, when commencing that work, she said, ‘I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“She did not copy individuals, but she invested her own creations with individuality of character.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“Some persons have surmised that she took her characters from individuals with whom she had been acquainted.  They were so life-like that it was assumed that they must once have lived, and have been transferred bodily, as it were, into her pages.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“The opinions of another gentleman about ‘Emma’ were so bad that they could not be reported to the author.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“One gentleman read the first and last chapters of ‘Emma,’ but did not look at the rest because he had been told that it was not interesting.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“One lady could say nothing better of ‘Mansfield Park,’ than that it was ‘a mere novel.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“It may be amusing to contrast with these testimonies from the great, the opinions expressed by other readers of more ordinary intellect.  The author herself has left a list of criticisms which it had been her amusement to collect, through means of her friends.  This list contains much of warm-hearted sympathising praise, interspersed with some opinions which may be considered surprising.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“One cannot suppress the wish that she had lived to know what such men thought of her powers, and how gladly they would have cultivated a personal acquaintance with her.  I do not think that it would at all have impaired the modest simplicity of her character; or that we should have lost our own dear ‘Aunt Jane’ in the blaze of literary fame.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“I close this list of testimonies, this long ‘Catena Patrum,’ with the remarkable words of Sir Walter Scott, taken from his diary for March 14, 1826: {149}  ‘Read again, for the third time at least, Miss Austen’s finely written novel of “Pride and Prejudice.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“Seldom has any literary reputation been of such slow growth as that of Jane Austen.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“The suggestions which Jane received as to the sort of story that she ought to write were, however, an amusement to her, though they were not likely to prove useful; and she has left amongst her papers one entitled, ‘Plan of a novel according to hints from various quarters.’  The names of some of those advisers are written on the margin of the manuscript opposite to their respective suggestions.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem.  I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter.  No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“Jane Austen lived in entire seclusion from the literary world: neither by correspondence, nor by personal intercourse was she known to any contemporary authors.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“I have no doubt that I, and my sisters and cousins, in our visits to Chawton, frequently disturbed this mystic process, without having any idea of the mischief that we were doing; certainly we never should have guessed it by any signs of impatience or irritability in the writer.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“How she was able to effect all this is surprising, for she had no separate study to retire to, and most of the work must have been done in the general sitting-room, subject to all kinds of casual interruptions.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“The first year of her residence at Chawton seems to have been devoted to revising and preparing for the press ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’; but between February 1811 and August 1816, she began and completed ‘Mansfield Park,’ ‘Emma,’ and ‘Persuasion,’ so that the last five years of her life produced the same number of novels with those which had been written in her early youth.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“Jane Austen was successful in everything that she attempted with her fingers.  None of us could throw spilikins in so perfect a circle, or take them off with so steady a hand.  Her performances with cup and ball were marvellous.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“The following extracts are from letters addressed to a niece who was at that time amusing herself by attempting a novel, probably never finished, certainly never published, and of which I know nothing but what these extracts tell.  They show the good-natured sympathy and encouragement which the aunt, then herself occupied in writing ‘Emma,’ could give to the less matured powers of the niece.  They bring out incidentally some of her opinions concerning compositions of that kind:—”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“So, Miss B. is actually married, but I have never seen it in the papers; and one may as well be single if the wedding is not to be in print.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“Chawton may be called the second, as well as the last home of Jane Austen; for during the temporary residences of the party at Bath and Southampton she was only a sojourner in a strange land; but here she found a real home amongst her own people.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“Forms of expression vary, but good sense and right principles are the same in the nineteenth that they were in the seventeenth century.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“Pride and Prejudice,’ which some consider the most brilliant of her novels, was the first finished, if not the first begun.  She began it in October 1796, before she was twenty-one years old, and completed it in about ten months, in August 1797.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“I believe that, if Jane ever loved, it was this unnamed gentleman; but the acquaintance had been short, and I am unable to say whether her feelings were of such a nature as to affect her happiness.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“It was remarked in her family that ‘Cassandra had the merit of having her temper always under command, but that Jane had the happiness of a temper that never required to be commanded.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“But dearest of all to the heart of Jane was her sister Cassandra, about three years her senior.  Their sisterly affection for each other could scarcely be exceeded.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“These two brothers have been dwelt on longer than the others because their honourable career accounts for Jane Austen’s partiality for the Navy, as well as for the readiness and accuracy with which she wrote about it.  She was always very careful not to meddle with matters which she did not thoroughly understand.”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen

“We did not think of her as being clever, still less as being famous; but we valued her as one always kind, sympathising, and amusing”
― James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen