Quotations by Emily Brontë

EMILY JANE BRONTË WAS AN ENGLISH NOVELIST AND POET WHOSE REPUTATION CHIEFLY RESTS UPON HER ONLY NOVEL, WUTHERING HEIGHTS.

“Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.  But, if you be ashamed of your touchiness, you must ask pardon, mind, when she comes in.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“A person who has not done one-half his day’s work by ten o’clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree—
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?”

~ Emily Brontë, Love and Friendship

“I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be: that proves I love him better than myself.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it.  I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.  So much the worse for me that I am strong.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“I’m now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town.  A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him ...”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“… you have left me so long to struggle against death alone, that I feel and see only death!  I feel like death!”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger ...”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free; and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them!  Why am I so changed? … I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills. ”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“I have to remind myself to breathe—almost to remind my heart to beat!”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees.  My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.  Nelly, I am Heathcliff!  He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,' he answered. 'Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer—but yours! How can I?”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “Honest people don't hide their deeds.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches, and every word he says.  I love all his looks, and all his actions, and him entirely and altogether.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “… heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “… he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, … but because he’s more myself than I am.  Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same ...”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.  And this is one: I’m going to tell it—but take care not to smile at any part of it.”

~ 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

“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 cannot live without my life!  I cannot live without my soul!”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Your cold blood cannot be worked into a fever: your veins are full of ice-water; but mine are boiling, and the sight of such chillness makes them dance.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad, … and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.”

~ Emily Brontë, The night is darkening round me

“… treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

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Quotations by D.H. Lawrence

D.H. LAWRENCE (1885-1930) WAS AN INFLUENTIAL ENGLISH NOVELIST, ESSAYIST, POET, AND CRITIC OF THE 20^TH CENTURY.

“Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body, and the body hates and resists the mind.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, The Complete Poems

 “A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“A woman unsatisfied must have luxuries. But a woman who loves a man would sleep on a board”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Letter to John Middleton Murry, 1913

 “One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it, like any Knight of the Grail, and the journey is always towards the other soul, not away from it.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Letter to Thomas Dunlop, July 7, 1914

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

“Love is never a fulfillment. Life is never a thing of continuous bliss. There is no paradise. Fight and laugh and feel bitter and feel bliss: and fight again. Fight, fight. That is life.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, 1923

“But that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you because you won't; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason. Or for no reason at all, except that they are discontented children, and can't be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“The human soul needs beauty more than bread.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Nottingham and the Mining Countryside (1921)

“Those that go searching for love
only make manifest their own lovelessness,
and the loveless never find love,
only the loving find love,
and they never have to seek for it.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Search for Love

“Every true artist is the salvation of every other. Only artists produce for each other a world that is fit to live in.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

“Recklessness is almost a man's revenge on his woman. He feels he is not valued so he will risk destroying himself to deprive her altogether.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

 “I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts the result of my dreams. It is very queer. But my dreams make conclusions for me. They decide things finally. I dream a decision. Sleep seems to hammer out for me the logical conclusions of my vague days, and offer me them as dreams.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Letter to Edward Garnett, January 29, 1012

“When I hear modern people complain of being lonely then I know what has happened. They have lost the cosmos.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse

“Vitally, the human race is dying. It is like a great uprooted tree, with its roots in the air. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

“Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks.
Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools.
And their grandchildren are once more slaves.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Liberty’s Old Story

“The human being is a most curious creature. He thinks he has got one soul, and he has got dozens.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia

“The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I’ll do my best. But you’re right. We must rescue ourselves as best we can.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Give up bearing children and bear hope and love and devotion to those already born.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“For to desire is better than to possess, the finality of the end was dreaded as deeply as it was desired.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

“The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“A man could no longer be private and withdrawn. The world allows no hermits.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“… human desire is the criterion of all truth and all good. Truth does not lie beyond humanity, but is one of the products of the human mind and feeling. There is really nothing to fear. The motive of fear in religion is base...”

~ D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow

“Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.”

 ~ D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, 1915

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Quotations by Kingsley Amis

KINGSLEY AMIS (1922-1995), AN ENGLISH NOVELIST, POET, CRITIC, AND TEACHER.

“A man's sexual aim, he had often said to himself, is to convert a creature who is cool, dry, calm, articulate, independent, purposeful into a creature that is the opposite of these; to demonstrate to an animal which is pretending not to be an animal that it is an animal.”

~ Kingsley Amis, One Fat Englishman

“If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Jake's Thing

“Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“You'll find that marriage is a good short cut to the truth. No, not quite that. A way of doubling back to the truth. Another thing you'll find is that the years of illusion aren't those of adolescence, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they're the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head. Your age, by the way, Jim. That's when you first realize that sex is important to other people besides yourself. A discovery like that can't help knocking you off balance for a time.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“Those who professed themselves unable to believe in the reality of human progress ought to cheer themselves up, as the students under examination had conceivably been cheered up, by a short study of the Middle Ages. The hydrogen bomb, the South African Government, Chioang Kaidick, Senator McCarthy himself, would then seem a light price to pay for no longer being in the Middle Ages”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“With some exceptions in science fiction and other genres I have small difficulty in avoiding anything that could be called American literature. I feel it is unnatural, not I think entirely because it uses a language that is not mine, however closely akin to my own.”

~ Kingsley Amis, The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage

“The rewards for being sane may not be very many, but knowing what's funny is one of them.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Stanley and the Women

“It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.”

~ Kingsley Amis, One Fat Englishman (1963)

“How wrong people always were when they said: 'It's better to know the worst than go on not knowing either way.' No; they had it exactly the wrong way round. Tell me the truth, doctor, I'd sooner know. But only if the truth is what I want to hear.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naive - or worse.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking

“Wives and such are constantly filling up any refrigerator they have a claim on, even its ice-compartment, with irrelevant rubbish like food.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking

“He thought how much he liked her and had in common with her, and how much she'd like and have in common with him if she only knew him.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“When the bishop farted we were amused to hear about it. Should the ploughboy find treasure we must be told. But when the ploughboy farts... er... keep it to yourself.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Jake's Thing

“It's never pleasant to have one's unquestioning beliefs put in their historical context, as I know from experience, I can assure you.”

~ Kingsley Amis, The Green Man

“For a moment he felt like devoting the next ten years to working his way to a position as art critic on purpose to review Bertrand's work unfavorably.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“It is not extraordinary that the extraterrestrial origin of women was a recurrent theme of science fiction.”

~ Kingsley Amis, The King's English: A Guide to Modern English Usage

“Nothing short of physical handicap has ever made anybody turn over a new leaf.”

~ Kingsley Amis, The Green Man

“I thought to myself how much more welcome a faculty the imagination would be if we could tell when it was at work and when not.”

~ Kingsley Amis, The Green Man

“The human race has not devised any way of dissolving barriers, getting to know the other chap fast, breaking the ice, that is one-tenth as handy and efficient as letting you and the other chap, or chaps, cease to be totally sober at about the same rate in agreeable surroundings.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis

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