Sunday, February 17, 2008

Jane Austen

For a long time, I have had a deep respect for Mark Twain because of the following quote ascribed to him:
"The only good thing about a library with no books in it, is that there are no books by Jane Austen in it."
I love that quote and have used it more times than any other quote I know.

So, I was shocked to find that he never said it. His exact quote was in fact:

"Jane Austen's books...are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."

Shame. The first version sounds so much better.

4 comments:

Sean said...

Is it bad that I have no idea who Jane Austin is?


I like Die Hard.

Anonymous said...

GASP!!!! Are you mocking Jane! She's my favorite author (yeah, seriously).

I know you secretly love all her books.

-Charlotte

Bonstance said...

I love that you are creating a diaglog about libraries, and the incredible impact they have upon free societies. What a great resource, those libraries.

"Free to the people," I always say.

Bonnie

Jim Elek said...

I once went to watch Pride and Prejudice with my wife and some of my family. I forget exactly who was there, but I thonk it was Tim and Reese, mom, and maybe Josh or something. That movie was extremely fantastic to behold. The one action scene was in a store where they were purchasing ribbons and bows. It was kick ass. Then there were like 643 scenes where they were talking a lot more than they should have. There was this one bad ass scene where this one english broad plays the piano for like 3.5 hours or something. That movie was a little less exciting than Die Hard. At the end, one of the broads gets married and yells "Yippee Kayay Mother Fucker"!!! It was awesome, totally out of place, but awesome. Go Jane Austen GO!!!