“Where shall we see a better daughter or a kinder sister or a truer friend? . . . She will make no lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred times.”
Such words of praise for Emma from Mrs. Weston
Emma, volume 1, chapter 5
I only hope that none of my blunders will be lasting.
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Filed under Emma, Emma Woodhouse, Family, Friendship, Miss Taylor - Mrs. Weston
[Mrs. Weston] “She is loveliness itself. Mr. Knightley, is not she?”
“I have not a fault to find with her person,” he replied. “I think her all you describe. I love to look at her; and I will add this praise, that I do not think her personally vain. Considering how handsome she is, she appears to be little occupied with it; her vanity lies another way.”
Mrs. Weston and Mr. Knightley on Emma’s beauty and faults
Emma, volume 1, chapter 5
Filed under Beauty, Emma, Emma Woodhouse, Miss Taylor - Mrs. Weston, Mr. Knightley, Pride
I love this little bit:
“Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through–and very good lists they were–very well chosen and very neatly arranged–sometimes alphabetically and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen–I remember thinking it did her judgement so much credit that I preserved it some time; and I dare say she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to anything requiring industry and patience and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding.”
Mr. Knightley discussing Emma’s faults with Mrs. Weston, who will not admit them
Emma, volume 1, chapter 5
I think I have made various reading lists of my own over the years…
Filed under Education, Emma, Emma Woodhouse, Miss Taylor - Mrs. Weston, Mr. Knightley, Patience, Reading
One of my dear friends was married this weekend, in a lovely tiny old church with a Gregorian choir. Here, tongue in cheek of course, are Mr. Woodhouse’s thoughts on marriage:
“Matrimony, as the origin of change, was always disagreeable; . . . he was very much disposed to think Miss Taylor had done as sad a thing for herself as for them, and would have been a great deal happier if she had spent all the rest of her life at Hartfield.”
Emma, volume 1, chapter 1
Thanks to Molland’s for the illustration
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Filed under Emma, Marriage, Miss Taylor - Mrs. Weston, Mr. Woodhouse
