"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs"
— Charlotte Brontë

"Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time."
— Jasper Fforde (The Eyre Affair)

"Most true is it that 'beauty is in the eye of the gazer.' My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth, — all energy, decision, will, — were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me, — that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me."
— Charlotte Brontë

"No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves, it is the woman only who can make it a torment."
— Jane Austen

"“Tell you what, you let me go, and I’ll ask you plenty of questions about your race. Until then, I’m slightly distracted with how this little vacation on the good ship Holy Sh*t is going to pan out for me.”
-Jane to V"
— J.R. Ward (Lover Unbound)

"Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home—my only home."
— Charlotte Brontë

"No lace - no lace, Mrs. Bennet, I beg of you! - Mr. Bennet"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Her coming was my hope each day,
Her parting was my pain;
The chance that did her steps delay
Was ice in every vein."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?
"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

""Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her.""
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.

(in Athenaeum, December 1923)
"
— Virginia Woolf

"Oh! you are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in general. You never see fault in any body. All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in my life."
"I would wish not to be hasty in censuring any one; but I always speak what I think."
— Jane Austen

"Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter."
— Karen Joy Fowler

"For [Jane Austen and the readers of Pride and Prejudice], as for Mr. Darcy, [Elizabeth Bennett's] solitary walks express the independence that literally takes the heroine out of the social sphere of the houses and their inhabitants, into a larger, lonelier world where she is free to think: walking articulates both physical and mental freedom."
— Rebecca Solnit (Wanderlust: A History of Walking)

"I can easily believe it. Women of that class have great opportunities, and if they are intelligent may be well worth listening to. Such varieites of human nature as they are in the habit of witnessing! And it is not merely in its follies, that they are read; for they see it occasionally under every circumstance that can be most interesting or affecting. What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation-- of all the sacrifices that ennoble us most. A sick chamber may often furnish the worth of volumes."
— Jane Austen

"A great deal; you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way; they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should - so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"Happiness

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine."
— Jane Kenyon

"Mr Bennet in Pride & Prejudice,
This is an evening of wonders, indeed!"
— Jane Austen

"I will only add, God bless you.
-Fitzwilliam Darcy"
— Jane Austen

"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible but there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise."
— Plato

"Anne smiled and said, "My idea of good company, Mr. Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company." "You are mistaken," said he gently, "that is not good company, that is the best..." "
— Jane Austen (Persuasion)

"One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering. "
— Jane Austen

"Jane Austen, who is said to be Shakespearian, never reminds us of Shakespeare, I think, in her full-dress portraits, but she does so in characters such as Miss Bates and Mrs. Allen."
— A.C. Bradley

"'What an excellent father you have, girls!' said she, when the door was shut. 'Such joys are scarce since the good Lord saw fit to close the gates of Hell and doom the dead to walk amongst us.'"
— Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies)

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

"Of all the evenings it is possible to spend, a companionable evening with friends is the best."
— Amanda Grange (Mr. Knightley's Diary)

"Don't you have any needs?

No, I'm Jesus."
— Kevin and Jane (27 Dresses)

""'Whom are you going to dance with?' asked Mr. Knightley.
She hesitated a moment and then replied, 'With you, if you will ask me.'
'Will you?' said he, offering his hand.
'Indeed I will. You have shown that you can dance, and you know we are not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper.'
'Brother and sister! no, indeed.'""
— Jane Austen

"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

"I figured even the most jaded and cynical inhabitant might report a bloody girl in a party dress carrying a severed head by its hair."
— Faith Hunter (Skinwalker)

""Everytime I read Jane Austin, I want to dig up her bones and hit her in the head with her own femur""
— Mark Twain

"I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him.
-Emma Woodhouse"
— Jane Austen (Emma)

"The house seemed to have all the comforts of little Children, dirt and litter."
— Jane Austen

"As he talked, I watched Emma and wondered what is to become of her. She is of an age to be married but she spends her time with people who are so much older than she, that she is never likely to meet a husband. And if she does, I do not know if she will wish to marry. She is too comfortable where she is. Her father is easy to please and she can do as she likes with the household. A husband will have his own views, and Emma is not likely to take to that way of living."
— Amanda Grange (Mr. Knightley's Diary)

"To a good man, yes, one who knows her in all her moods, who can laugh at her follies and rejoice in her virtues; who will not allow her to give in to her worst instincts; one who knows her, and who, knowing her, will still love her, and love her as she should be loved."
— Amanda Grange (Mr. Knightley's Diary)

"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. "
— Jane Austen (Emma)

"I have an inward treasure, born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld; or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give."
— Charlotte Brontë

"The man of my dreams is almost faded now. The one I have created in my mind. The sort of man each woman dreams of in her most secret and deepest part of her heart. I could almost see him now before me. What would I say to him if he were really here? Forgive me, I've never known this feeling. I've lived without it all my life. Is it any wonder that I fail to recognize it? You brought it to me for the first time. Is there any way I can tell you how my life has changed? Anyway at all, to let you know what sweetness you have given me? There's so much to say-- and I can't find the words-- except for these... I love you. That is what I would say to him if he were really here. "
— Richard Matheson

"The man of my dreams is almost faded now. The one I have created in my mind. The sort of man each woman dreams of in her most secret and deepest part of her heart. I could almost see him now before me. What would I say to him if he were really here? Forgive me, I've never known this feeling. I've lived without it all my life. Is it any wonder that I fail to recognize it? You brought it to me for the first time. Is there any way I can tell you how my life has changed? Anyway at all, to let you know what sweetness you have given me? There's so much to say-- and I can't find the words-- except for these... I love you. That is what I would say to him if he were really here. "
— Elise McKenna Somewhere In Time by Richard Matheson

"It is June 27, 1912. You are lying in your bed in the Grand Hotel and it is 6 p.m. on the evening of June 27, 1912. Your mind accepts this absolutely. 6 p.m. on June 27, 1912. Elise McKenna is in this hotel at this very moment. Her manager, William Fawcett Robinson, is in this hotel at this very moment. Now, this moment, here. Both in the Grand Hotel on this evening of June 27, 1912. 6 p.m. on June 27, 1912. Elise McKenna, now, in this hotel. She and her company are in this hotel at this very moment. Now on June 27, 1912, 6 p.m. Your mind accepts this, absolutely. You have traveled back in time, soon you will open your eyes. You will walk into the corridor, and you will go downstairs and you will find Elise McKenna, who is in this hotel at this very moment. "
— Richard Collier in Somewhere In Time by Richard Matheson