Quotes from Northanger Abbey

It was a lot of fun writing down quotes from this novel! There were so many in the first chapters! Hope you enjoy.


This concludes my section on Northanger Abbey....and, all 6 of Jane Austen's novels. I have enjoyed doing these, and hope what I have planned for future posts will be enjoyable! =)

“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine.”

“ ‘Catherine grows quite a good-looking girl – she is almost pretty today,’ were words that caught her ears now and then; and how welcome were the sounds! To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.”

“She had reached the age of seventeen, without having one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility, without having inspired one real passion, and without having excited even admiration but was very moderate and very transient.”

“But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.”

“[I]f adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.”

“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.”

“[F]or a fine Sunday in Bath empties every house of its inhabitants, and all the world appears on such an occasion to walk about and tell their acquaintance what a charming day it is.”

“…they parted – on Miss Tilney’s side with some knowledge of her new acquaintances’ feelings, and on Catherine’s, without the smallest consciousness of having explained them.”

“Is there a Henry in the world who could be insensible to such a declaration? Henry Tilney at least was not."

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

“I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.” –Catherine

“[E]very man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies.” –Mr. Tilney