“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“I was quiet, but I was not blind.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“Every moment has its pleasures and its hope.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“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, quote from Mansfield Park
“Oh! Do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“Let us have the luxury of silence.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“But indeed I would rather have nothing but tea.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“Fanny! You are killing me!"
"No man dies of love but on the stage, Mr. Crawford.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody not greatly in fault themselves to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“I was so anxious to do what is right that I forgot to do what is right.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“[N]obody minds having what is too good for them.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“I have no talent for certainty.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“Everybody likes to go their own way–to choose their own time and manner of devotion.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“You have qualities which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“If this man had not twelve thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“…but then I am unlike other people I dare say.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“Oh! write, write. Finish it at once. Let there be an end of this suspense. Fix, commit, condemn yourself.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“I understand Crawford paid you a visit?"
"Yes."
"And was he attentive?"
"Yes, very."
"And has your heart changed towards him?"
"Yes. Several times. I have - I find that I - I find that-"
"Shh. Surely you and I are beyond speaking when words are clearly not enough.... I missed you."
"And I you.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“I am very strong. Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“But Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere; one is intimate with him by instinct. No man of any brain can open at a good part of one of his plays without falling into the flow of his meaning immediately.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“Sitting with her on Sunday evening — a wet Sunday evening — the very time of all others when if a friend is at hand the heart must be opened, and every thing told…”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“She was feeling, thinking, trembling about everything; agitated, happy, miserable, infinitely obliged, absolutely angry.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“Until one morning, one of the coldest mornings of the year, when I came in with the book cart and found Jean Hollis Clark, a fellow librarian, standing dead still in the middle of the staff room.
"I heard a noise from the drop box," Jean said.
"What kind of noise?"
"I think it's an animal."
"A what?"
"An animal," Jean said. "I think there's an animal in the drop box."
That was when I heard it, a low rumble from under the metal cover. It didn't sound like an animal. It sounded like an old man clearing his throat.
Gurr-gug-gug. Gurr-gug-gug.
But the opening at the top of the chute was only a few inches wide, so that would be quite a squeeze for an old man. It had to be an animal. But what kind? I got down on my knees, reached over the lid, and hoped for a chipmunk.
What I got instead was a blast of freezing air. The night before, the temperature had reached minus fifteen degrees, and that didn't take into account the wind, which cut under your coat and squeezed your bones. And on that night, of all nights, someone had jammed a book into return slot, wedging it open. It was as cold in the box as it was outside, maybe colder, since the box was lined with metal. It was the kind of cold that made it almost painful to breathe.
I was still catching my breath, in fact, when I saw the kitten huddled in the front left corner of the box. It was tucked up in a little space underneath a book, so all I could see at first was its head. It looked grey in the shadows, almost like a little rock, and I could tell its fur was dirty and tangled. Carefully, I lifted the book. The kitten looked up at me, slowly and sadly, and for a second I looked straight into its huge golden eyes. The it lowered its head and sank back down into its hole.
At that moment, I lost every bone in my body and just melted.”
― Vicki Myron, quote from Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World
“Who knows until we experience it? I think that heaven and reincarnation are both ways of making us feel better about what happens to people's souls after death. I hope at least one of them is true.”
― Cat Patrick, quote from Forgotten
“After this night is over, then you can drift away, they you can sleep for ever, for nothing will ever matter again.”
― Michael Morpurgo, quote from Private Peaceful
“You’re going to die some day without ever having had enough trouble in your life. Not of the right kind anyway.”
― Kent Haruf, quote from Plainsong
“I would that I could have stopped time and preserved that day forever. It was a perfect day. There was the shadow of sorrow, yes. It would always be there. But that was the nature of life. The bright mirror and the dark, reflecting one another. And today there was so much brightness.”
― Jacqueline Carey, quote from Kushiel's Mercy
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
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