Mood: Thoughtful
Listening to: Dawn (Main Theme) composed by Dario Marianelli and performed by Jean-Yves Thibaudet OST Pride and Prejudice
I’ve always been an ardent fan of Keira Knightley.
My favourite British movie of all time – aside from Love Actually – has to be Pride and Prejudice, where she was nominated for an Oscar.
Truth be told, when I first read books by Jane Austen in high school, I couldn’t really appreciate her writings.
After all, what would an adolescent child know of love and romance.
It was after the series of relationships and break ups that I began to truly comprehend what her books meant.
It’s much like envisioning a sense of high without ever trying spirits or cigarettes. Or being in love without ever having kissed someone or held her hand.
Ever since I first watched the film 3 years ago, I would make a habit of watching it again every time I feel a sense of joie de vivre. Everyone has his or her own favourite little film that they’d watch time and again.
This is mine.
It’s that famous pervading English notion of wit, intellect and common sense that I so wish to emulate.
Right now, I’m looking forward to another of Keira’s movies, The Duchess. Hopefully it’ll be as good as P&P. She is rumoured to be in the running for another Best Actress Oscar.
*****
Words from Jane Austen to live by, even if they were written more than a century ago…
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.
If a woman is partial to a man, and does not endeavour to conceal it, he must find it out.
Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.
A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.
Nothing is more deceitful … than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.
The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.
Good opinion once lost, is lost forever.
There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil— a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.
It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first.
The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.
