Peter > Peter's Quotes

“He who the sword of heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe;
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go;
More nor less to others paying
Than by self-offences weighing.
Shame to him whose cruel striking
Kills for faults of his own liking!
Twice treble shame on Angelo,
To weed my vice and let his grow!
O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!
How may likeness made in crimes,
Making practise on the times,
To draw with idle spiders' strings
Most ponderous and substantial things!
Craft against vice I must apply:
With Angelo to-night shall lie
His old betrothed but despised;
So disguise shall, by the disguised,
Pay with falsehood false exacting,
And perform an old contracting.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Truth had run through my fingers. Every drop had escaped.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“A very elementary exercise in psychology, not to be dignified by the name of psycho-analysis, showed me, on looking at my notebook, that the sketch of the angry professor had been made in anger. Anger had snatched my pencil while I dreamt. But what was anger doing there? Interest, confusion, amusement, boredom--all these emotions I could trace and name as they succeeded each other throughout the morning. Had anger, the black snake, been lurking among them? Yes, said the sketch, anger had.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“I took the red dress down and put it against myself. 'Does it make me look intemperate and unchaste?' I said.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“I scorn your idea of love,' I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. 'I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You have introduced a topic on which our natures are at variance -- a topic we should never discuss: the very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality were required, what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage -- forget it.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It was my time to assume ascendency. My powers were in-play and in force. I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to leave me: I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once. Where there is energy to command well enough, obedience never fails.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost.”
― Henry James, The art of fiction

“Don’t underestimate the value of irony—it is extremely valuable.”
― Henry James, Washington Square

“It argued a special genius; he was clearly a case of that. The spark of fire, the point of light, sat somewhere in his inward vagueness as a lamp before a shrine twinkles in the dark perspective of a church; and while youth and early middle-age, while the stiff American breeze of example and opportunity were blowing upon it hard, had made the chamber of his brain a strange workshop of fortune. This establishment, mysterious and almost anonymous, the windows of which, at hours of highest pressure, never seemed, for starers and wonderers, perceptibly to glow, must in fact have been during certain years the scene of an unprecedented, a miraculous white-heat, the receipt for producing which it was practically felt that the master of the forge could not have communicated even with the best intentions.”
― Henry James, The Golden Bowl

“Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can!”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“I want to be a society vampire, you see.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald Oscar Wilde Robert Nathan Henry James H. G. Wells Leo B. Kneer