Sloane Pick > Sloane's Quotes

“Indeed, it was delightful to read a man's writing again. It was so direct, so straightforward after the writing of women. It indicated such freedom of mind, such liberty of person, such confidence in himself. One had a sense of physical well-being, free mind, which had never been thwarted or opposed, but had had full liberty from birth to stretch itself in whatever way it liked. All this was admirable. But after reading a chapter or two a shadow seemed to lie across the page. It was a straight dark bar, a shadow shaped something like the letter "I." One began dodging this way and that to catch a glimpse of the landscape behind it. Whether that was indeed a tree or a woman walking I was not quite sure. Back one was always hailed to the letter "I." One began to be tired of "I." Not but what this "I" was a most respectable "I"; honest and logical; as hard as a nut, and polished for centuries by good teaching and good feeding. I respect and admire that "I" from the bottom of my heart. But- here I turned a page or two, looking for something or other - the worst of it is that in the shadow of the letter "I" all is shapeless as mist. Is that a tree? No, it is a woman. But... she has not a bone in her body.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“For a moment Anne's heart fluttered queerly and for the first time her eyes faltered under Gilbert's gaze and a rosy flush stained the paleness of her face. It was as if a veil that had hung before her inner consciousness had been lifted, giving to her view a revelation of unsuspected feelings and realities. Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps. . . perhaps. . .love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath. ”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

“Margaret the Churchwoman, her father the Dissenter, Higgins the Infidel, knelt down together. It did them no harm.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

“I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.”
― Virginia Woolf

“A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“He shook hands with Margaret. He knew it was the first time their hands had met, though she was perfectly unconscious of the fact.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“The Anglo-Saxon genius for parliamentary government asserted itself; there was a great deal of talk and no decisive action.”
― H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man

“She had always thought of love as something confused and furtive, and he made it as bright and open as the summer air.”
― Edith Wharton, Summer

“There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self denial, anxiety and discouragement.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“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

“We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“This good fellowship - camaraderie - usually occurring through the similarity of pursuits is unfortunately seldom super-added to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labors but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstances permit its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death - that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, besides which the passion usually called by the name is as evanescent as steam.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“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

“To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world is almost a palpable movement. To enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are diregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“Age seemed to have come down on him as winter comes on the hills after a storm.”
― Edith Wharton, Summer

“But if man, as in our society, advances only towards physical love, even though he surrounds it with deceptions and with the shallow formality of marriage, he obtains nothing but licensed vice.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

“Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them-- that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“That's the worst of growing up, and I'm beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don't seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“She had looked her duty courageously in the face and found it a friend - as duty ever is when we meet it frankly.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but young men, and the older she gets the worse she is. Young men are all very well in their place, but it doesn't do to drag them into everything, does it?”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. That was what he was protecting rather hot-headedly and with too much emphasis, because it was a jewel to him of the rarest price.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge. That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own