"Life seems nothing more than a quick succession of busy nothings."
— Jane Austen

"Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint!"
— Jane Austen (Mansfield Park)

"I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives."
— Jane Austen

"The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"What dreadful Hot weather we have!—It keeps one in a continual state of Inelegance."
— Jane Austen

"Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?"
— Virginia Woolf

"I have lost friends, some by death...others by sheer inability to cross the street."
— Virginia Woolf

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."
— Emily Dickinson

"There is no Frigate like a book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry..."
— Emily Dickinson

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!"
— Emily Dickinson

"Forever is composed of nows."
— Emily Dickinson

"This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me"
— Emily Dickinson

"Wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas."
— Patrick O'Brian (The Hundred Days)

"They were looking after themselves, living with rigid economy; and there was no greater proof of their friendship than the way their harmony withstood their very grave differences in domestic behaviour. In Jack's opinion Stephen was little better than a slut: his papers, odd bits of dry, garlic'd bread, his razors and small-clothes lay on and about his private table in a miserable squalor; and from the appearance of the grizzled wig that was now acting as a tea-cosy for his milk-saucepan, it was clear that he had breakfasted on marmalade.
Jack took off his coat, covered his waistcoat and breeches with an apron, and carried the dishes into the scullery. 'My plate and saucer will serve again,' said Stephen. 'I have blown upon them. I do wish, Jack,' he cried, 'that you would leave that milk-saucepan alone. It is perfectly clean. What more sanitary, what more wholesome, than scalded milk?'"
— Patrick O'Brian (Post Captain)

"‘Go and see whether the Doctor is about,’ said Jack, ‘and if he is, ask him to look in, when he has a moment.’
‘Which he is in the fish-market, turning over some old-fashioned lobsters. No. I tell a lie. That is him, falling down the companion-way and cursing in foreign.’"
— Patrick O'Brian (Blue at the Mizzen)

"'This short watch that is about to come, or rather these two short watches--why are they called dog watches? Where, heu, heu, is the canine connection?'

'Why,' said Stephen, 'it is because they are curtailed of course.'
"
— Patrick O'Brian (Post Captain)

"I am opposed to authority, that egg of misery and oppression; I am opposed to it largely for what it does to those who exercise it."
— Patrick O'Brian (Post Captain)

"'Why there you are, Stephen,' cried Jack. 'You are come home, I find.'

'That is true,' said Stephen with an affectionate look: he prized statements of this kind in Jack."
— Patrick O'Brian (H.M.S. 'Surprise')