Ann > Ann's Quotes

“The world is supposed to be full of possibilities, but they narrow down to pretty few in most personal experience. There's lots of good fish in the sea... maybe... but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea.”
― D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be
The candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
― Edith Wharton

“If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“Love is a religion, and its rituals cost more than those of other religions. It goes by quickly and, like a street urchin, it likes to mark its passage by a trail of devastation.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“I'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“True love rules especially through memory.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Girl With The Golden Eyes

“Let dangers go; thy war shall be with me,
But such a war, as breaks no bonds of peace.
Speak thou fair words, I'll cross them with fair words;
Send thou sweet looks, I'll meet them with sweet looks;
Write loving lines, I'll answer loving lines;
Give me a kiss, I'll countercheck thy kiss.
Be this our warring peace, or peaceful war.”
― Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy

“There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

from “Araby”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive - when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves flood-marks which are never reached again.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“A man enjoys the happiness he feels, a woman the happiness she gives.”
― Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses

“What a thing of fantasy a woman may become after dusk.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Ferragus, chef des Dévorants

“Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor translation...”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“His serenity was but the array of wild flowers niched in his ruin.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“...the passion of love separated its victim terribly from everyone but the loved object.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“She had a certain way of looking at life which he took as a personal offense.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“If, for example, I had just as much love as you had virtue (and that is surely saying a lot) it is not astonishing that one should end at the same time as the other. It is not my fault.”
― Pierre A.F. Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses

“Neither was in love with a young man unless he was she were verbally very near: that is unless they were profoundly interested, talking to one another. The amazing, the profound, the unbelievable thrill there was in passionately talking to some really clever young man by the hour, resuming day after day for months...”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“It was as if thousands and thousands of little roots and threads of consciousness in him and her had grown together into a tangled mass, till they could crowd no more, and the plant was dying. Now quietly, subtly, she was unravelling the tangle of his consciousness and hers, breaking the threads gently, one by one, with patience and impatience to get clear.”
― D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“Archer reddened to the temples but dared not move or speak: it was as if her words had been some rare butterfly that the least motion might drive off on startled wings, but that might gather a flock if it were left undisturbed.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“Archer was too intelligent to think that a young woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that reminded her of her past. She might believe herself wholly in revolt against it; but what had charmed her in it would still charm her even though it were against her will.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

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

“Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.”
― Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

“She could feel the blood flowing within her and she felt that she must die or break forth into leaves and flowers. It was not passion she felt: not the passion of the body, though that was there, but rather an exultation, a reaching for life, for the whole of the life which she was capable, and in that life which she but dimly divined was centered love, the love for a man. She was not in love with Rantel: she was in love with what he meant to her as someone she could love.”
― Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

“He does not listen for an answer, but yawns, his face opening lewdly upon regions compared with which nudity becomes a milliner's invention.”
― Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

“Back in my day, we had it all set up. You lined up when you died, and you'd answer for your evil deeds and your good deeds, and if your evil deeds outweighed a feather, we'd feed your soul and your heart to Ammet, the Eater of Souls"
"He must have eaten a lot of people."
"Not as many as you'd think. It was a really heavy feather. We had it made special. You had better be pretty damn evil to tip the scales on that baby...”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods