#era

Esteem him! Like him! Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. Use those words again, and I will leave the room this moment. ↗

— Jane Austen

#literature #love #marianne-dashwood #quote #sense-sensibility

She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. ↗

— Zora Neale Hurston

#women #love

You’ll have to turn your back.” He turned slowly. The view from the back was just as good as the view from the front. I could practically hear Lucy snickering in the back of my head. I might be the vampire daughter, but she was the one who was a bad influence. No question. ↗

— Alyxandra Harvey

#solange #love

You can argue that it's a different world now than the one when Matthew Shepard was killed, but there is a subtle difference between tolerance and acceptance. It's the distance between moving into the cul-de-sac and having your next door neighbor trust you to keep an eye on her preschool daughter for a few minutes while she runs out to the post office. It's the chasm between being invited to a colleague's wedding with your same-sex partner and being able to slow-dance without the other guests whispering. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#gay-rights #love #relationships #tolerance #love

Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard. To see the best is to see most clearly, and it is the lover's privilege. ↗

— J.M. Barrie

#fiction #literature #love

I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine. ↗

— Emily Dickinson

#literature #meaning #power #words #literature

Most people were heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will beat for hours after it has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#hemingway #literature

The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. ↗

— Tom Waits

#literature #writing #literature

True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics. ↗

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

#literature

If you will tell me when God permits a Christian to lay aside his armour, I will tell you when Satan has left off temptation. Like the old knights in war time, we must sleep with helmet and breastplate buckled on, for the arch-deceiver will seize our first unguarded hour to make us his prey. The Lord keep us watchful in all seasons, and give us a final escape from the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear. ↗

— Charles H. Spurgeon

#temptation #vulnerability #temptation