Cecily Paterson

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Jane is great

One of my favourite Jane Austen passages from Mansfield Park, culminating in the gorgeously ignorant sentence at the end:

...her cousins found her ignorant of many things with which they had long been familiar, they thought her prodigiously stupid and for the first two or three weeks were continually bringing some fresh report of it into the drawing room.

"Dear Mamma, only think, my cousin cannot put the map or Europe togheter - or tell the principal rivers in Russia - she never heard of Asia minor - she does not know the difference between watercolours and crayons..."

[Mrs Norris then said] "...remember, that if you are ever so forward and clever yourselves, you should always be modest, for much as you know already, there is a great deal more for you to learn."

"Yes, I know there is, until I am seventeen."