Julia > Julia's Quotes

“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

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“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

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

“What is the opposite of two?
A lonely me, a lonely you.”
― Richard Wilbur, Opposites, More Opposites, and a Few Differences

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
― Philip Pullman

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.”
― Orson Welles

“Joy is the best makeup.”
― Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

“I never change, I simply become more myself.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Solstice

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
― William Ernest Henley, Echoes of Life and Death

“Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
― Jane Austen, Pride And Prejudice

“If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction-and ultimately, without a major resolution.”
― Jasper Fforde, Something Rotten

“there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
― Daphne du Maurier

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“In the world I am
Always a stranger
I do not understand its language
It does not understand my silence”
― Bei Dao

“Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't.”
― Bill Nye

“It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.”
― Joseph Conrad, An Outcast of the Islands

“There is indeed a heaven on this earth, a heaven which we inhabit when we read a good book.”
― Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop

“The beauty of being a bookseller is that you don't have to be a literary critic: all you have to do to books is enjoy them.”
― Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop

“We live for books.”
― Umberto Eco