Jen > Jen's Quotes

“I think, scathed as you look, and charred and scorched, there must be a little sense of life in you yet, rising out of that adhesion at the faithful, honest roots: you will never have green leaves more - never more see birds making nests and singing idylls in your boughs; the time of pleasure and love is over with you; but you are not desolate: each of you has a comrade to sympathize with him in his decay.


We know that God is everywhere but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The stinkiest hair products have got to be any sort of perm, and Nair. In fact, they smell remarkably similar. Do you think that Nair is just a souped-up version of a perm that makes your leg hair super-curl until it falls off? And can anything that smells that bad be good for you?”
― Anita Renfroe, The Purse-driven Life: It Really Is All About Me

“As women, we are the protagonists of our own personal novels. We are called upon to be the heroines of our own lives, not supporting characters.”
― Erin Blakemore, The Heroine's Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder

“I am here to posit that it's exactly in these moments of struggle and stress that we need books the most. There's something in the pause to read that's soothing in and of itself. A moment with a book is basic self-care, the kind of skill you pass along to your children as you would a security blanket or a churchgoing habit.”
― Erin Blakemore, The Heroine's Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder

“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

“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

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”
― Walter Cronkite

“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.”
― John Berger, Keeping a Rendezvous: Essays

“As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.”
― Anne Sexton

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?”
― Henry Ward Beecherr

“The world was hers for the reading.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.”
― Arthur Miller

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
― Henry James

“She would defend herself, saying that love, no matter what else it might be, was a natural talent. She would say: You are either born knowing how, or you never know.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.”
― Shelby Foote

“Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything.”
― Isabel Allende, City of the Beasts

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.”
― John Burroughs

“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.”
― Charles M. Schulz

“The way you wear your hat,
The way you sip your tea,
The mem'ry of all that --
No, no! They can't take that away from me!”
― Ira Gershwin

“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.”
― Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“O, there is lovely to feel a book, a good book, firm in the hand, for its fatness holds rich promise, and you are hot inside to think of good hours to come.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.”
― Ann Patchett, State of Wonder