#lit

...Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I couldn't forget your voice!' 'For how long?' 'O - ever so long. Days and days.' 'Days and days! Only days and days? O, the heart of a man! Days and days!' 'But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. It was not a full-blown love - it was the merest bud - red, fresh, vivid, but small. It was a colossal passion in embryo. It never returned. ↗

— Thomas Hardy

#reality-bites #love

It's not at all hard to understand a person; it's only hard to listen without bias. ↗

— Criss Jami

#bias #compassion #comprehension #discernment #fear

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

The idea that their paths might have easily not crossed leaves her breathless, like a near-miss accident on a highway, and she can't help marveling at the sheer randomness of it all. Like any survivor of chance, she feels a quick rush of thankfulness, part adrenaline and part hope. ↗

— Jennifer E. Smith

#hope #yalit #love

What's agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn't care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you--if you happen to be me--with homecoming queens first, then girls next door, and finally anybody who might be pleased to see you now and then at the dinner table and in bed on occasion. You look up from reading the newspaper and realize that no one loves you, and no one burns for you. ↗

— Charles Baxter

#relationships #settling #solitude #love

By loving them for more than their abilities we show our children that they are much more than the sum of their accomplishments. ↗

— Eileen Kennedy-Moore

#accomplishment #achievement #child #children #children-and-parents

She wanted him to tell her that when you love someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#obsession #love

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

Quick-loving hearts ... may quickly loathe. ↗

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#love #lovers-quarrels #passion #precariousness #volatility

It is not what to do, but how much love we put into the doing. We can do not greats, only small things with great love." - Mother Theresa ↗

— Mother Teresa

#love