sarah > sarah's Quotes

“It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn't know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“While they were driving through Longford they had the radio on, it was playing a White Lies song that had been popular when they were at school, and without touching the dial or raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the radio Connell said: You know I love you. He didn't say anything else. She said she loved him too and he nodded and continued driving as if nothing at all had happened, which in a way it hadn't.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Somewhere out in the darkness, a phoenix was singing in a way Harry had never heard before: a stricken lament of terrible beauty. And Harry felt, as he had felt about phoenix song before, that the music was inside him, not without: It was his own grief turned magically to song..”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“Odd words floated back to them over the hundreds of heads. "Nobility of spirit"..."intellectual contribution"..."greatness of heart"...It did not mean very much. It had little to do with Dumbledore as Harry had known him. He suddenly remembered Dumbledore's idea of a few words, "nitwit," "oddment," "blubber," and "tweak," and again had to suppress a grin...”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“I assure you. I have no notion of treating men with such respect. That is the way to spoil them.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“And more than once I have stood rope in hand in that same awful place, and tried to save a struggling wretch; but never saw one come through the surf alive, in such a night as he saved me.”
― John Meade Falkner, Moonfleet

“The past,' he thought, 'is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another.' And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain; that when he touched one end the other quivered.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Witch and Other Stories

“It is one of the secrets in that change of mental poise which has been fitly named conversion, that to many among us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them into receptiveness..”
― George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“It is the most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since — on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“P.S. Ever the best of friends.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“At a certain level of abstraction, anyone could have written the poem, but that didn't feel true either. It seemed as though what he was really saying was: there's something beautiful about the way you think and feel, or the way you experience the world is beautiful in some way.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“...the Frances glove, she said. And the Bobbi glove. Then she mimed them talking to each other like puppets. On and on and on, she said.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I'm afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we are!'
'As we are!' repeated Mr. Rochester”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“But you can't get her there; there is no road to the moon: it is all air; and neither you nor she can fly.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, "the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I was for a while troubled with the haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade—the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not know then that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.”
― Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre

“All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“...I could have deemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine...”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear!”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

“I wonder what Piglet is doing," thought Pooh.
"I wish I were there to be doing it, too.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“You never can tell with bees.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh