Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen, Marilyn Butler, Claire Lamont

Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.

 

Ah, wow. There is Austen's cynicism in all it's glory