This seems to be the summer to read classics. I finished Persuasion by Jane Austen a couple of weeks ago. Persuasion is the story of Anne Elliot, a 27-year-old woman, who had turned down an offer of marriage seven years earlier because those closest to her persuaded her that it would be a mistake. The book commences seven years later and Captain Wentworth is inadvertently back in her life. She realizes her mistake and a more grown up Anne begins to hope in second a chance at happiness.
Some of my favorite passages from the book:
Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition is in vain.
Anne could not be be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a pint in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.
Anne wondered if it ever occurred to him, now, to question the justness of his own previous opinion as to the universal feeling and advantage of firmness of character; and whether it might strike him, that, like all other qualities of the mind, it should have its proportions and limitations.
One man's way is as good as another's, but we all like our own best.
"My idea of good company, Mr. Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company." – Anne
"One does not love a place less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering." – Anne
"I was very young, and associated only with the young and we were a thoughtless, gay set, without any strict rules of conduct. We lived for enjoyment. I think differently now; time and sickness, and sorrow, have given me other notions..." – Mrs. Smith
