Viridiana > Viridiana's Quotes

“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“I think... if it is true that
there are as many minds as there
are heads, then there are as many
kinds of love as there are hearts.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says, some women may feel?”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“I shall do one thing in this life - one thing certain - that is, love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till I die.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Perhaps all romance is like that; not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different colour.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I'm old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!”
― Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders

“Her face had the usual fulness of expression which is developed by a life of solitude. Where the eyes of a multitude continuously beat like waves upon a countenance they seem to wear away its mobile power ; but in the still water of privacy every feeling and sentiment unfolds in visible luxuriance, to be interpreted as readily as a printed word by an intruder. In years she was no more than nineteen or twenty, but the necessity of taking thought at a too early period of life had forced the provisional curves of her childhood's face to a premature finality.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders

“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!”
― Andre Aciman, Call Me by Your Name