Paula Freedman > Paula's Quotes

“Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain.”
― Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Spoken by Arthur Weasley

“If there ever was a day when ending life as we knew it seemed like an option, it would be a Tuesday.”
― Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang

“Maybe, thought Alice fearfully, the other Alice who has been living my life for the last ten years isn't very nice.”
― Liane Moriarty, What Alice Forgot

“I think there should be a rule that everyone in the world should get a standing ovation at least once in their lives.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of danger security for happiness.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“He took on their insolent pride the revenge of the purest charity—housing, caring for, befriending them, so as no son could have done it more tenderly and efficiently.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animate abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarise it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Everything you can think of is true.”
― Tom Waits

“There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Having leveled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Are there wicked things, not human, which envy human bliss?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I felt, if not brave, yet a little desperate; and desperation will often suffice to fill the post and do the work of courage.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I recollect it was settled by general consent that India was quite a misrepresented country, and had nothing objectionable in it, but a tiger or two, and a little heat in the warm part of the day.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“Better, perhaps, to die quickly a pleasant death, than drag on long a charmless life.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”
― Tom Waits

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”
― Tom Waits

“A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.”
― Tom Waits

“T’ain’t no sin to take off your skin, and dance around in your bones.”
― Tom Waits

“Most of the people I admire, they usually smell funny and don't get out much. It's true. Most of them are either dead or not feeling well.”
― Tom Waits

“The big print giveth and the small print taketh away. ”
― Tom Waits

“One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“I wish I was friends with things," he said at last, "but I'm not. I never had anything to be friends with, and I can't bear people.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett

“Don't let us make it tidy," said Mary anxiously. "It wouldn't seem like a secret garden if it was tidy.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off and they are nearly always doing it.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“She had never been taught to ask permission to do things, and she knew nothing at all about authority, so she would not have thought it necessary to ask Mrs. Medlock if she might walk about the house, even if she had seen her.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“Perceiving myself in a blunder, I attempted to correct it. I might have seen there was too great a disparity between the ages of the parties to make it likely that they were man and wife. One was about forty: a period of mental vigour at which men seldom cherish the delusion of being married for love by girls: that dream is reserved for the solace of our declining years. The other did not look seventeen.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Oh! here we are the same as anywhere else, when you get to know us,' observed Mrs. Dean, somewhat puzzled at my speech.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“he was always greedy; though what he grasps with one hand he flings away wit the other.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights