#classics

A great nose may be an index Of a great soul ↗

— Edmond Rostand

#humor #humor

Life if curious when reduced to its essentials ↗

— Jean Rhys

#literary-fiction #life

If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave. ↗

— Emily Brontë

#love #obsession #love

Mama, the more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. ↗

— Jane Austen

#jane-austen #love #marianne-dashwood #sense-and-sensibility #world

By the Angel, it just crushed Sophocles," noted Will. "Has no one respect for the classics these days? ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#will #respect

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn? ↗

— Jane Austen

#sports

But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art. ↗

— Russell Banks

#american #art #classics #early #early age

I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter. ↗

— Francine Prose

#reading #imagination

You are going, Jane?" "I am going, sir." "You are leaving me?" "Yes." "You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?" What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard was it to reiterate firmly, "I am going!" "Jane!" "Mr. Rochester." "Withdraw then, I consent; but remember, you leave me here in anguish. Go up to your own room, think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings; think of me." He turned away, he threw himself on his face on the sofa. "Oh, Jane! my hope, my love, my life!" broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a deep, strong sob. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#heartbreak #romance #life

But the older he grew and the more intimately he came to know his brother, the oftener the thought occurred to him that the power of working for the general welfare – a power of which he felt himself entirely destitute – was not a virtue but rather a lack of something: not a lack of kindly honesty and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of the power of living, of what is called heart – the aspiration which makes a man choose one out of all the innumerable paths of life that present themselves, and desire that alone. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#romances #russian-literature #life