Wisdom Quotes, page 110

“Oh Agnes, oh my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!”

“You have been the last dream of my soul.”

“I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.”

“The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.”

“I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.”

“Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman.”

“Women can always put things in the fewest words, except when it's blowing up; then they lengthen it out.”

“I cannot help it; reason has nothing to do with it. I love her against reason — but who would as soon love me for my own sake, as she would love the beggar at the corner.”

“Why am I always at war with myself? Why have I spoken, as if compelled, what I knew all along I ought to have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?”

“To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.”

“Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.”

“A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once won, goes through fire and water for the winner, and never changes, and is never daunted.”

“Think, now and then, that there is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you.”

“Friendless I can never be, for all mankind are my kindred, and I am on ill terms with no one member of my great family.”

“True love believes everything, and bears everything, and trusts everything.”

“Break their hearts, my pride and hope; break their hearts and have no mercy.”

“I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.”

“You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me.”

“Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.”

“It is because I think so much of warm and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded.”

“I verily believe that her not remembering and not minding in the least made me cry again inwardly — and that is the sharpest crying of all.”

“There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.”

“I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.”

“The more man knows of man, the better for the common brotherhood among men.”

“Mystery and disappointment are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries.”

“"We are friends," said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose from the bench. "And will continue friends apart," said Estella. I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.”

“How beautiful you are! You are more beautiful in anger than in repose. I don't ask you for your love; give me yourself and your hatred; give me yourself and that pretty rage; give me yourself and that enchanting scorn; it will be enough for me.”

“From the days when it was always summer in Eden, to these days when it is mostly winter in fallen latitudes, the world of a man has invariably gone one way — Charles Darnay's way: the way of the love of a woman.”

“When I speak of home, I mean the place where, in default of a better, those I love are gathered together; and if that place were a gypsy's tent or a barn, I should call it by the same good name notwithstanding.”

“Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then.”