"If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die."
— William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)

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

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
— Douglas Adams

"Sometimes I have the strangest feeling about you. Especially when you are near me as you are now. It feels as though I had a string tied here under my left rib where my heart is, tightly knotted to you in a similar fashion. And when you go to Ireland, with all that distance between us, I am afraid that this cord will be snapped, and I shall bleed inwardly."
— Charlotte Brontë

"Without music, life would be a mistake."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
— C.S. Lewis

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
— Mark Twain

"So many books, so little time."
— Frank Zappa

"We read to know that we are not alone."
— C.S. Lewis

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
— Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles)

"Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men."
— Joseph Conrad

"The NELLIE, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.
"
— Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness & Selections from The Congo Diary)

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."
— Oscar Wilde

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
— Mark Twain

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."
— Confucius

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
— Winston S. Churchill

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
— Albert Einstein

"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)

"I cannot live without books."
— Thomas Jefferson

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

"A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow."
— William Shakespeare

"Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. "
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will."
— Charlotte Brontë

"I knew you would do me good in some way, at some time--I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you."
— Charlotte Brontë

""Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear."

- Mr Rochester. "
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."
— Mark Twain

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
— Maya Angelou

"I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens."
— Woody Allen

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone."
— Bill Cosby

"Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet."
— Douglas Adams

"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."
— Douglas Adams

"A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him."
— Dylan Thomas