No Comment, Quotation — December 3, 2007, 12:00 am
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“I am no novel-reader — I seldom look into novels — Do not imagine that
I often read novels — It is really very well for a novel.” Such
is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss — ?” “Oh!
It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down
her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It
is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, 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.
–Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, ch. 5 (1803).
More from Scott Horton:
No Comment — April 12, 2013, 11:11 am
A new report from Seton Hall University exposes government surveillance of attorney-client conversations
No Comment, Six Questions — March 18, 2013, 9:00 am
Rashid Khalidi on how the United States sustains the failure of the Israel-Palestine peace process
No Comment, Six Questions — February 4, 2013, 9:00 am
Alex Gibney on his documentary investigating the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of child sex-abuse cases
Amount British Nuclear Fuels paid the British Scouts last year to add its logo to their scientist badge:
Roughly 80 percent of U.S. cocaine was thought to be contaminated with a drug that causes skin tissues to rot.
Ohio was judged to be the most profane state.
“This is the heart of the magic factory, the place where medicine is infused with the miracles of science, and I’ve come to see how it’s done.”
