"I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem."
— Diana Gabaldon (Dragonfly in Amber)

"If you can walk with the crowd and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run- Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, And-which is more-you'll be a man my son."
— Rudyard Kipling (If: A Father's Advice to His Son)

"One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.
"
— — Joan of Arc

"My bursting heart must find vent at my pen."
— Abigail Adams

"Lying on the floor, with the carved panels of the ceiling flickering dimly above, I found myself thinking that I had always heretofore assumed that the tendency of eigh­teenth-century ladies to swoon was due to tight stays; now I rather thought it might be due to the idiocy of eighteenth-century men. "
— Diana Gabaldon (Dragonfly in Amber)

"A hedgehog? And just how does a hedgehog make love?" he demanded.

No, I thought. I won't. I will not. But I did. "Very carefully," I replied, giggling helplessly. So now we know just how old that one is, I thought. "
— Diana Gabaldon (Outlander)

"Life's temptations have the purpose of putting our spiritual integrity to the test. To yield to them, however, gives one a precarious and tormented satisfaction. But the worst temptations are those we give in to without getting anything in return except for the brutal discovery of our weakness."
— Paolo Maurensig

"Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead."
— Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)

"He shook his head, staring at her like a condemned man who beheld the face of his executioner. "Aline," he whispered, "Do you know what hell is?"

"Yes." Her eyes overflowed. "Trying to exist with your heart living somewhere outside your body."

"No. It's knowing that you have so little faith in my love, you would have condemned me to a lifetime of agony." His face contorted suddenly. "To something worse than death."

- McKenna to Lady Aline"
— Lisa Kleypas (Again The Magic)

""The main thing is the YOU beneath the clothes and skin--the ability to do, the will to conquer, the determination to understand and know this great, wonderful, curious world."
--from THE WISDOM OF W.E.B. DU BOIS"
— W.E.B. Du Bois

"Love's stories written in love's richest books.
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes."
— William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream)

"They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.

'Poor Grendel's had an accident,' I whisper. 'So may you all.'"
— John Champlin Gardner Jr. (Grendel)

"One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying."
— Joan of Arc

"I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him. In my defense I must say it was an engrossing book, and it was very rare to come across another person in that particular part of the world in that war year of 1915."
— Laurie R. King

"Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate de fois gras."
— Herman Melville (Moby Dick)

"When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail's response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, "My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.""
— David McCullough (John Adams)

"IF you wish to be a writer then don't wait until you write the "great American novel" for they aren't written they are created. If you don't write at all you won't know how "great" that simple book can be."
— Shiree McCarver

"But the tale or narrative set in the past may have its particular time-free value; and the candid reader will not misunderstand me, will not suppose that I intend any preposterous comparison, when I observe that Homer was farther removed in time from Troy than I am from the Napoleonic wars; yet he spoke to the Greeks for 2,000 years and more."
— Patrick O'Brian

" 'Damn, you're good,' he said and rolled onto his back. The man wasn't much for flowery speech, Alesandra thought with a smile. It didn't matter. She was arrogantly proud of herself because she'd pleased him. Perhaps she should give him a little praise too. She rolled onto her side to face him, put her hand on his chest directly over his pounded heart, and whispered. 'You're good, too. 'Tis the truth, you're the best I've ever had.'
He opened his eyes to look at her. 'I'm the only one you've ever had, remember?' His voice was gruff with affection.
'I remember,' she said.
'No other man is ever going to touch you, Alesandra. You're mine.'"
— Julie Garwood (Castles)

"Show us not the aim without the way.
For ends and means on earth are so entangled
That changing one, you change the other too;
Each different path brings other ends in view"
— Arthur Koestler

"Think ere you speak"
— Valerie Tripp

"When writing the constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, John Adams wrote:
I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading."
— John Adams

"The intermittent depression that had shadowed him throughout his adult life was about to envelop him once again. "
— Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America)

"'Without a word Ptylus rushed upon Jethro with his sword, thinking to make short work of this insolent peasant; but as he did so, Jehthro whirled his massive club round his head, and catching the blow upon it, shivered it in pieces.
Ptylus stopped his arm, and gazing steadily at his opponent, said: "Wretch, do you dare to murder the high-priest of Osiris?"
"No," Jethro said, "but I dare to execute him," and he brought his heavy club down with all his strength upon the head of the priest.'"
— G.A. Henty (G.A. Henty on CD ROM)

"lightning thief was good but the sea of monsters is better and has more action!"
— Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters)

"Patience is only a virtue when there is something worth waiting for."
— Lauren Willig (The Masque of the Black Tulip)

"Harsh words live in the dungeon of the heart"
— Norman Mailer (The Gospel According to the Son: A Novel)

"I am not here only so that the blind might see, but to teach those who thought they could see that they are blind"
— Norman Mailer (The Gospel According to the Son: A Novel)

"" Our Euripides the human,
With his droppings of warm tears,
and his touchings of things common
Till they rose to meet the spheres.""
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those
who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
— Thomas Jefferson

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the
government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
— Thomas Jefferson

"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Roger speaking to Brianna:
"It's too important. You don't forget having a dad."
"You do remember your father?"
"No. I remember yours.""
— Diana Gabaldon (An Echo in the Bone)

"If any1 is interseted in the oregon trail rose wilder lane is a really good read"
— Rose Wilder Lane (Rose Wilder Lane: Her story)

"This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes."
— Elizabeth I

"One step for man and one step for man kind"
— Neil Armstrong

"The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lose equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue off the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.

What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and the impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey?

But I am done with this creed of corruption.

I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame."
— Ayn Rand (Anthem)

"It touched me to be trusted with something terrible."
— Elizabeth Kostova (The Historian)

"" You say the papers " have made a great farce " of some of your decisions. I hope that does not mean that they laugh at them, but only they report them stupidly, which is common.""
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (Complete Works Of Oliver Wendell Holmes 13 Volumes))

"Down in the cellar the Gestapo were licensed to practice was the Ministry of Justice called ‘heightened interrogation’. The rules had been drawn up by civilised men in warm offices and they stipulated the presence of a doctor."
— Robert Harris (Fatherland)

"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king."
— Queen Elizabeth I

"" I'll betide thee, say I, and may the Gods, or at least the Athenians, confound thee for a vile citizen and a vile third-rate actor! Read the evidence.""
— Demosthenes

"Want to read my most favorites books? They are Wildflowers, Bridie's Daughter, and Secrets! You'll be glad you did!"
— Robert Noonan

"The soil that gave us birth...we cling to it because it is our first love; we cling to it because it will be our last...
"
— John Howard Payne