The Reading Room

“All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.”

“The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.”

“Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.”

“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones.”

“Better to be without logic than without feeling.”

“To you I am neither man nor woman. I come before you as an author only. It is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me--the sole ground on which I accept your judgment.”

“It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility; they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.”

“If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own.”

“True enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire where-ever I see it.”

“The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter - in the eye.”

“You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength.”

“Look twice before you leap.”

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”

“Who has words at the right moment?”

“I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.”

“Give him enough rope and he will hang himself.”

“I have an inward treasure born within me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld; or offered only at a price I cannot afford.”

“If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.”

“Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.”

“Conventionality is not morality.”

“You know full well as I do the value of sisters' affections: There is nothing like it in this world.”

“I am always easy of belief when the creed pleases me.”

“Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties.”

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.”

“Memory in youth is active and easily impressible; in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years.”

“If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”

“Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within, as on the state of things without and around us.”

“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.”

“Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy; its after-flavor, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.”

“There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.”

“I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.”

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrong.”

“I feel monotony and death to be almost the same.”

“If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.”

“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.”

“I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me.”

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.”

“And what is hell? Can you tell me that?” “A pit full of fire.” “And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?” “No, sir.” “What must you do to avoid it?” I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: “I must keep in good health, and not die.”

“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.”