Ashley

“Do you like him much?'
I told you I liked him a little. Where is the use of caring for him so very much: he is full of faults.'
Is he?'
All boys are.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Today I must be very careful, today I have left my armor at home.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

“Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.”
― Jean Rhys, Quartet