Tessa > Tessa's Quotes

“But in the meantime, you must be content, I say, to be misunderstood for a while. We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary."
"What is that, grandmother?"
"To understand other people.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin

“That's all nonsense," said Curdie. "I don't know what you mean."
"Then if you don't know what I mean, what right have you to call it nonsense?”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin

“Sometimes the reason offered for seeking aesthetic excellence in the music of the church is that thereby one pleases God. I think that is true. But not because we know what music God enjoys-- though I suspect it must be music which is unified, rich, and intense! Rather, because it is in the joy of his people that God finds delight.”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“I am not aware...that to think of any person is to make a great claim upon that person, my dear.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over? Because, if it is to spite her, I should think - but you know best - that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think - but you know best - she was not worth gaining over.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“And what's the best of all," he said, "you've been more comfortable alonger me, since I was under a dark cloud, than when the sun shone. That's the best of all.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away,but love stays with us. Love is God.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered - and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.'

- Jane Eyre”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“What will you do with your accomplishments? What, with the largest portion of your mind-- sentiments-- tastes?"
"Save them till they are wanted. They will keep.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“He had been able to repress every disrespectful word; but the flashing eye, the gloomy and troubled brow, were part of a natural language that could not be repressed,-- indubitable signs, which showed too plainly that the man could not become a thing.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible, and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“I've lost everything in this world, and it's clean gone, forever-- and now I can't lose heaven, too; no, I can't get to be wicked, besides all.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“Society absolutely must look into these things since they are its own work.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”
― Victor Hugo

“How pretty it is here!"
It was an awful hovel, but she felt free.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Properly speaking, he no longer held opinions; he had sympathies. To which party did he belong? To the party of humanity.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories that it has come to be disbelieved. Few people dare say nowadays that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet that is the way love begins, and only that way. The rest is only the rest, and comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than the great shocks that two souls give each other in exchanging this spark.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Woe, alas, to those who have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will rob them of everything. Try to love souls, you will find them again.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Great perils share this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“He who does not weep does not see.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The pupil dilates in the night, and at last finds day in it, even as the soul dilates in misfortune, and at last finds God in it.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Love is the only ecstasy, everything else weeps.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Do you want a priest?"
"I have one." answered Jean Valjean.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie