"The world looks for happiness through self-assertion. The Christian knows that joy is found in self-abandonment. 'If a man will let himself be lost for My sake,' Jesus said, 'he will find his true self.' A Christian woman's true freedom lies on the other side of a very small gate---humble obedience---but that gate leads out into a largeness of life undreamed of by the liberators of the world, to a place where the God-given differentiation between the sexes is not obfuscated but celebrated, where our inequalities are seen as essential to the image of God, for it is in male and female, in male as male and female as female, not as two identical and interchangeable halves, that the image is manifested."
— Elisabeth Elliot

"Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work."
— Oswald Chambers

"Wherever you are, be all there! Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God."
— Jim Elliot

"No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books."
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!"
— Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)

"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love."
— Jane Austen

"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them."
— William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)

"Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music; perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Avonlea)

"There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough."
— Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)

"Living to glorify God means doing everything...
for Him,
His way,
to point to His greatness
and to reflect His goodness."
— Joshua Harris (Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship)

"Terms don't define our lives; our lives define our terms."
— Joshua Harris (Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship)

"Maturity starts with the willingness to give oneself."
— Elisabeth Elliot (Let Me Be a Woman)

""God wants us to choose to love him freely, even when that choice involves pain, because we are committed to him, not to our own good feelings and rewards. He wants us to cleave to him, as Job did, even when we have every reason to deny him hotly. That, I believe, is the central message of Job. Satan had taunted God with the accusation that humans are not truly free. Was Job being faithful simply because God had allowed him a prosperous life? Job's fiery trials proved the answer beyond doubt. Job clung to God's justice when he was the best example in history of God's apparent injustice. He did not seek the Giver because of his gifts; when all gifts were removed he still sought the Giver." -Yancey pg 91

"[Job] by standing on his own in the midst of suffering, without the benefit of soothing answers, gained powerful new strength. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel has said, 'Faith like Job's cannot be shaken because it is the result of having been shaken.' " - Yancey pg 92 "
— Philip Yancey (Where Is God When It Hurts?)

"To some, the image of a pale body glimmering on a dark night whispers of defeat. What good is a God who does not control his Son's suffering? But another sound can be heard: the shout of a God crying out to human beings, "I LOVE YOU." Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to - because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.


Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross. "
— Philip Yancey

""Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.""
— Charles R. Swindoll

"The pursuit of happiness is a matter of choice...it is a positive attitude we choose to express. It is not a gift delivered to our door each morning, nor does it come through the window. And it is certain that our circumstances are not the things that make us joyful. If we wait for them to get just right, we will never laugh again."
— Charles R. Swindoll

"You must know... surely, you must know it was all for you. You are too generous to trifle with me. I believe you spoke with my aunt last night, and it has taught me to hope as I'd scarcely allowed myself before. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes have not changed, but one word from you will silence me forever. If, however, your feelings have changed, I will have to tell you: you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"do you really think he likes me lizzi?"
"jane, he danced with you most of the night and stared at you the rest of it."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"In vain I have struggled. It will not do! My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you... Almost from the earliest moments of your acquaintance, I have come to feel for you a passionate admiration and regard, which despite my struggles, has overcome every rational objection. And I beg you, most fervently, to relieve my suffering and consent to be my wife."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"From the very beginning— from the first moment, I may almost say— of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad"
— Christina Rossetti (Pre-Raphaelite Poetry: An Anthology)

"When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply I may forget."
— Christina Rossetti (The Complete Poems)

"For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strenghten whilst one stands"
— Christina Rossetti (Goblin Market and Other Poems)

""Trust me, I have not earned your dear rebuke,
I love, as you would have me, God the most;
Would lose not Him, but you, must one be lost,
Nor with Lot's wife cast back a faithless look
Unready to forego what I forsook;
This say I, having counted up the cost,
This, tho' I be the feeblest of God's host,
The sorriest sheep Christ shepherds with His crook.
Yet while I love my God the most, I deem
That I can never love you overmuch;
I love Him more, so let me love you too;
Yea, as I apprehend it, love is such
I cannot love you if I love not Him.
I cannot love Him if I love not you.""
— Christina Rossetti

"Do you dance Mr. Darcy?
Not if I can help it."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"His comments did not deserve the compliment of a rational reply."
— Jane Austen

"Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing; but I have never been in love ; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall."
— Jane Austen (Emma)

"...do anything rather than marry without affection."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)