Sopianae > Sopianae's Quotes

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“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

“Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred.”
― Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

“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

“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“What are men to rocks and mountains?”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“My good opinion once lost is lost forever.”
― Jane Austin, Pride and Prejudice

“Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“The distance is nothing when one has a motive.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony. So, I shall end an old maid, and teach your ten children to embroider cushions and play their instruments very ill.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Nincs emberi kapcsolat, mely megrendítőbb, mélyebb lenne, mint a barátság. A szerelmesek, igen, még a szülők és gyermekek kapcsolatában is mennyi az önzés és a hiúság! Csak a barát nem önző; máskülönben nem barát. Csak a barát nem hiú, mert minden jót és szépet barátjának akar, nem önmagának. A szerelmes mindig akar valamit; a barát nem akar önmagának semmit. A gyermek mindig kapni akar szüleitől, túl akarja szárnyalni atyját; a barát nem akar kapni, sem túlszárnyalni. Nincs titkosabb és nemesebb ajándék az életben, mint a szűkszavú, megértő, türelmes és áldozatkész barátság. S nincs ritkább.
Montaigne, mikor eltünődött az érzés fölött, mely La Boétie-hez fűzte, ezt mondotta: " Barátok voltunk.... Mert ő volt ő, s mert én voltam én. " Ez felette pontos. S Seneca ezt írja egyhelyt Luciliusnak: " Aki barát, szeret, de aki szeret, nem mindig barát. " Ez a megállapítás több is, mint pontosság: ez már igazság. Minden szeretet gyanús, mert önzés és fukarság lappang hamujában. Csak a barát vonzalma önzetlen, nincs benne érdek, sem az érzékek játéka. A barátság szolgálat, erős és komoly szolgálat, a legnagyobb emberi próba és szerep.”
― Sándor Márai, Füves könyv

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.”
― Lloyd Alexander

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.”
― Virginia Woolf