Erica ♡ > Erica ♡'s Quotes

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Fate was not kind, life was capricious and terrible, and there was no good or reason in nature. But there is good and reason in us, in human beings, with whom fortune plays, and we can be stronger than nature and fate, if only for a few hours. And we can draw close to one another in times of need, and live to comfort each other.

And sometimes when the black depths are silent, we can do even more. We can then be gods for moments, stretch out a commanding hand and create things which were not there before and which, when they are created, continue to live without us. Out of sounds, words and other frail and worthless things, we can construct playthings--songs and poems full of meaning, consolation and goodness, more beautiful and enduring than the grim sport of fortune and destiny.”
― Hermann Hesse, Gertrude

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“I would describe myself like a landscape I’ve studied at length, in detail; like a word I’m coming to understand; like a pitcher I pour from at mealtime; like my mother’s face; like a ship that carried me when the waters raged.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Das Stunden-Buch

“What does it mean, say the words, that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should live?”
― Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writings

“You said I killed you-haunt me, then! [...] Be with me always-take any form-drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!”
― Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“Each time you happen to me all over again.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“And you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well been half the world apart.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

“When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I think I love you, Cal." -Abra
I'm not good." -Cal
Because you're not good." -Abra”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I like revisiting, at certain times, spots where I was once happy; I like to shape the present in the image of the irretrievable past.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“What's the bravest thing you ever did?
He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“I think... if it is true that
there are as many minds as there
are heads, then there are as many
kinds of love as there are hearts.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“The soul is healed by being with children.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky