Sourced and curated.

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.

Louisa May Alcott

Little Women · 1868

★ 5.5

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice.

There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Great Expectations · 1860

★ 4.5

Novel · Coming of age story · Picaresque

Henry Fielding

Tom Jones · 1749

★ 4.3

I loved her simply because I found her irresistible.

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 4.0

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 4.0

I would always rather be happy than dignified.

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1847

★ 3.9

Reader, I married him.

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1847

★ 3.9

I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 3.9

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 3.9

Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride over all obstacles, and win the race!

The Personal History of David Copperfield · 1850

★ 3.8

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

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1847

★ 3.8

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.

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1847

★ 3.8

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education.

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1847

★ 3.8

Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces,—and as it gets older and stronger it will tear deeper,—love her, love her, love her!

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 3.8

My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol.

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1847

★ 3.7

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1848

★ 3.7

Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn't stop for anybody.

Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being a Walflower · 1999

★ 3.7

And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.

Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being a Wallflower · 1999

★ 3.7

Love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.

Peter Camenzind · 1904

★ 3.5

I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.

Demian · 1919

★ 3.5

One never reaches home... But wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

Demian · 1919

★ 3.5

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again.

Demian · 1919

★ 3.5

Love must not entreat... Or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.

Demian · 1919

★ 3.5

I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me.

Demian · 1919

★ 3.5

Trifles make the sum of life.

The Personal History of David Copperfield · 1850

★ 2.3

I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you.

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1847

★ 2.2

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 2.2

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching… I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 2.2

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 2.2

You must find your dream, then the way becomes easy.

Demian · 1919

★ 1.9

I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?

Demian · 1919

★ 1.9

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

Demian · 1919

★ 1.9

No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that-one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can.

Demian · 1919

★ 1.8

I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.

Great Expectations · 1860

★ 1.3

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

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1847

★ 1.3

I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back.