Ashley (semi-ia, exam szn) > Ashley's Quotes

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“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

“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

“Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation."
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.”
― Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I yearned for everything long gone.”
― Osamu Dazai, Schoolgirl

“It made me miserable that I was rapidly becoming an adult and that I was unable to do anything about it.”
― Osamu Dazai, Schoolgirl

“Good night. I'm Cinderella without her prince. Do you know where to find me in Tokyo? You won't see me again.”
― Osamu Dazai, Schoolgirl

“I’m a miserable cynic (a newer development) and a dreamy romantic (always have been), and it’s such a terrible combination that I don’t know how to tolerate myself.”
― Sarah Hogle, You Deserve Each Other

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“I was always an unusual girl.
My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean.”
― Lana Del Rey

“I am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony. So, I shall end an old maid, and teach your ten children to embroider cushions and play their instruments very ill.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“languages aren't just made of words. they're modes of looking at the world. They're the keys to civiliation. And that's knowledge worth killing for”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“They say nothing lasts forever but they're just scared it will last longer than they can love it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“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, Jane Eyre

“Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn't know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“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

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
― James Baldwin

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”
― James Baldwin