Great Throughts Treasury

"Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression."

"Extreme happiness invites religion almost as much as extreme misery."

"Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing."

"Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper."

"He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?"

"How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!"

"I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness."

"I don't like the sound of all those lists he's making - it's like taking too many notes at school; you feel you've achieved something when you haven't."

"Ah, but you're the insidious type--Jane Eyre with of touch of Becky Sharp. A thoroughly dangerous girl."

"But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage."

"And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate."

"I have noticed that rooms which are extra clean feel extra cold"

"I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself."

"I like seeing people when they can't see me."

"I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life."

"I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea."

"I was wandering around as usual, in my unpleasantly populated sub-conscious..."

"I wonder if there isn't a catch about having plenty of money? Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things?"

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."

"If you love people, you take them on trust."

"It is rather exciting to write by moonlight."

"It's odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it. It makes it easier to think rather private thoughts..."

"Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return -- that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. For a moment I felt that I had discovered a great truth."

"Oh, it is wonderful to wake up in the morning with things to look forward to!"

"Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with 'I love you, I love you'-- like father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper."

"Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you."

"Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me."

"Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can."

"There is something revolting about the way girls' minds often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. And most of those minds are shut to what marriage really means."

"Time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty."

"Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness."

"Was I the only woman in the world who, at my age - and after a lifetime of quite rampant independence - still did not quite feel grown up?"

"When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it -- or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it."

"Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?"