Quotes from Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

I assure you. I have no notion of treating men with such respect. That is the way to spoil them.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

Provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all.

[I]t is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.

Only a novel"... in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.

If I am wrong, I am doing what I believe to the right.

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.

If I could not be persuaded into doing what I thought wrong, I will never be tricked into it.

The past, present, and future, were all equally in gloom.