"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)

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."
— 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)

"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)

"I have not the pleasure of understanding you."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."
— Jane Austen

"She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I an in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant recollections."
— Jane Austen

"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)

"You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I do not think it worth while to wait for enjoyment until there is some real opportunity for it."
— Jane Austen

"I assure you. I have no notion of treating men with such respect. That is the way to spoil them."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"You can only have two motives, and I would interfere with either of them. Either you are in each other's confidence and have secret affairs to discuss, or you are conscious that your figures appear to the best advantage by walking. If the first, I should get in your way; if the second, I can admire you much better from here."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

""Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life."
"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects.

"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who married him cannot have a proper way of thinking."
— Jane Austen

"I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense."
— Jane Austen

"Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true."
— Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)

"Grief is a most peculiar thing; we're so helpless in the face of it. It's like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it."
— Arthur Golden

"Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be. (Memoirs of a Geisha 348)"
— Arthur Golden

"If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was."
— Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)

"Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper. (499)
"
— Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)

"I could no more have stopped myself from feeling that sadness than you could stop yourself from smelling an apple that has been cut open on the table before you."
— Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)

"We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course. Page 105"
— Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)

"...to see him again after so long awakened something inside me. I was surprised to find myself feeling sad rather than joyful, as i would have imagined. Page 369"
— Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)

"I dont think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it."
— Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)

"This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.Page 8."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"...to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. Page 41."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"...They flank me-Depression on my left, loneliness on my right. They dont need to show their badges. I know these guys very well.

...then they frisk me. They empty my pockets of any joy I had been carrying there. Depression even confiscates my identity;but he always does that.

-Page 47"
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and its time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you dont even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.

-Page 48"
— Elizabeth Gilbert