Jennea Combs > Jennea's Quotes

“I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter in all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness."

-Edward Ferrars”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“When I fall in love, it will be forever.”
― Jane Austen , Sense and Sensibility: The Screenplay

“If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience- or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“In spite of everything I loved you, and will go on loving you―on my knees, with my shoulders drawn back, showing my heels to the headsman and straining my goose neck―even then. And afterwards―perhaps most of all afterwards―I shall love you, and one day we shall have a real, all-embracing explanation, and then perhaps we shall somehow fit together, you and I, and turn ourselves in such a way that we form one pattern, and solve the puzzle: draw a line from point A to point B... without looking, or, without lifting the pencil... or in some other way... we shall connect the points, draw the line, and you and I shall form that unique design for which I yearn. If they do this kind of thing to me every morning, they will get me trained and I shall become quite wooden.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Any idiot can face a crisis; it's this day-to-day living that wears you out.”
― Anton Chekhov

“The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.”
― Chekhov, Anton Chekhov, Anton

“To fear love is to fear life, and those whose fear life are already three parts dead...”
― Anton Chekhov

“For God's sake, have some self-respect and do not run off at the mouth if your brain is out to lunch.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Let all of life be an unfettered howl.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature

“And yet I adore him. I think he's quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible – and there is absolutely nobody like him.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

“Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain — the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed — then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature

“I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antobodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.”
― Tim Keller

“The basic premise of religion– that if you live a good life, things will go well for you– is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet He had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice, and even torture.”
― Tim Keller

“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, Pride and Prejudice

“I am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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, Persuasion

“I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Villette

“Men judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves.”
― Charlotte Bronte

“The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! And there were times when I knew how you felt, and it was hell to know it, my little one. Lolita girl, brave Dolly Schiller.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita