Classic Literature Quotes

“Thats what makes a view so sad, and so beautiful. It'll be there when we're not.”
― Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

“I felt purged and holy and ready for a new life.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar: A Novel Classic

“There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing.”
― Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451

“I've known a hundred kinds of love;
⁠All made the loved one rue;
And what is thine that it should prove
⁠Than other love, more true?”
― Emily Brontë, Collected Poems

“It is dreadful that one cannot tear our the past by the roots. We cannot tear it out but we can hide the memory of it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Isn't it wonderful to be able to invite Anton Chekhov into your home?”
― Kevin Ansbro

“The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on, and the current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women

“She felt as if she had stabbed her dearest friend, and when he left her without a look behind him, she knew that the boy Laurie never would come again.”
― Louisa May Alcott , Good Wives

“If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct it singlehanded.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Villete

“That aching feeling of loneliness which always overcomes us when someone dear to us surrenders to a daydream in which we have no place.”
― NABOKOV, Mary, Mary

“Toward the end of 1939, Liesel had settled into life in Molching pretty well. She still had nightmares about her brother and missed her mother, but there were comforts now, too. She loved her papa, Hans Hubermann, and even her foster mother, despite the abusages and verbal assaults. She loved and hated her best friend, Rudy Steiner, which was perfectly normal. And she loved the fact that despite her failure in the classroom, her reading and writing were definitely improving and would soon be on the verge of something respectable. All of this resulted in at least some form of contentment and would soon be built upon to approach the concept of Being Happy."

(Page 49).”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently bu what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“Most people in this world seem to live "in character"; they have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the three are congruous one with another and true to the roles of their type.”
― H.G. Wells, Tono-Bungay

“Dove tu sei, quella è casa.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“...he could find no better relief to his feelings than by giving his housekeeper directions that every possible attention might be paid to the sick lady and her sister.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“He's poodlishly ridiculous.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

“He's poodlishly ridiculous.”
― Walter Kaufmann, Faust

“¿Por qué te enamora mi faz de tal suerte que no te vuelves hacia el hermoso jardín que florece bajo los rayos de Cristo? Allí están la rosa en que el Verbo divino encarnó; y allí están los lirios por cuyo aroma se descubre el buen camino.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Volume III: Paradiso, Part 2: Commentary

“Like Nietzsche once said: 'And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.' We writers were always like that. The damned, dancing like fools around the world - feeling everything around as if it were an ocean wave.”
― W.M Angel, Atlas Loved

“Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day... When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on the tp, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.”
― J. M. Barrie, Peter pan

“If you've not good servants you're miserable," Mrs. Touchett serenely said. "They're very bad in America, but I've five perfect ones in Florence."

"I don't see what you want with five," Henrietta couldn't help observing. "I don't think I should like to see five persons surrounding me in that menial position."

"I like them in that position better than in some others," proclaimed Mrs. Touchett with much meaning.

"Should you like me better if I were your butler, dear?" her husband asked.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Yes, you're changed; you've got new ideas over here," her friend continued.

"I hope so," said Isabel, "one should get as many new ideas as possible."

"Yes, but they shouldn't interfere with the old ones when the old ones have been the right ones.”
― Henry James

“I know what you hate. You hate something in them you can't understand. You don't hate their evil. You have the good in them you can't get at. I wonder what you want, what final thing.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“What I meant to tell you was only this', she said eagerly, and yet half-conscious of the absurdity of the position she had made for herself: 'that nobody has got me yet as a sweetheart, instead of my having a dozen as my aunt said; I hate to be thought men's property in that way_ though possibly I shall be to be had some day"

Bathsheba Everdene”
― Thomas Hardy

“Rien ne peut t’émouvoir, ô jeunesse ! Tu sembles posséder tous les trésors de la terre ; la tristesse elle-même te fait sourire, la douleur te pare. Tu es sûre de toi-même et, dans ta témérité, tu clames : « Voyez, je suis seule à vivre !... » Mais les jours s’écoulent, innombrables et sans laisser de trace ; la matière dont tu es tissée fond comme cire au soleil, comme de la neige... Et – qui sait ? – il se peut que ton bonheur ne réside pas dans ta toute-puissance, mais dans ta foi. Ta félicité serait de dépenser des énergies qui ne se trouvent point d’autre issue. Chacun de nous se croit très sérieusement prodigue et prétend avoir le droit de dire : « Oh ! que n’aurais-je fait si je n’avais gaspillé mon temps ! »”
― Ivan Turgenev, First Love

“در دل و جان خانه کردی عاقبت

هر دو را دیوانه کردی عاقبت

من تو را مشغول می‌کردم دلا

یاد آن افسانه کردی عاقبت”
― Rumi, گلچینی از غزلیات شمس تبریزی

“rotted down from manhood by their hopeless misery on the isle; wonted to cringe in all things to their lord, himself the worst of slaves; these wretches were now become wholly corrupted to his hands. He used them as creatures of an inferior race; in short, he gaffles his four animals, and makes murderers of them; out of cowards fitly manufacturing bravoes”
― Herman Melville , The Encantadas and Other Stories

“Completely, Perfectly, Incandescently Happy”
― Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

“كنتُ أشعر بالارتياح القلبي لأنني على مقربة من بيتي. في تلك اللحظة، كنتُ أعلم أن الملايين من الناس تراقبني، وكنتُ سعيدًا بأن كبير الوحوش المونسترواكان كان يراقبني من خلال ذلك المِنظار الكبير من أعلى برج الحراسة بالهرم الأكبر. استغللتُ تلك المراقبة من بعيد، وابتعدتُ عن طعامي قليلًا، ثم فتحتُ ورقة كانت بحوزتي، وابتعلتُ منها ثلاثة أقراص ومضغتُها. كانت تلك الأقراص علاجًا وطعامًا لي أيضًا، ثم تناولتُ قارورتي فشربتُ منها الماء.
كان معي حقيبة صغيرة يوجد بداخلها بعض الأشياء. من ضمنها بوصلة، أعطانيها كبير الوحوش المونسترواكان حتى تكون لي عون أثناء مغامرتي على أرض الظلام. وقد قال لي: إنك قد تضل الطريق وسط ذلك الظلام الدامس من غير تلك البوصلة.”
― William Hope Hodgson, أرض الظلام

“وجهكِ أجمل من سيَرِ الأبطال
‏وقلبك شطآنُ...
‏وأقول لقلبي: آن نغادر هذا البحر
‏وآن نكذّب بوصلة من خشبٍ
‏كلّ السفن متوجةٌ بشراعٍ من شبكٍ!
‏واللهفة رُبانُ
‏وأحبك
لولا أنّ الأرض...
‏أحبك
لولا أني الأرض
‏ولولا ذاكرتي والحمض النووي وأهلي والتاريخ
وأني لا يأخذني الحب
كما تأخذني الأوطانُ...”
― Mahdi Mansour