kindred spirits

"Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you-- especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly."

--Chapter XXIII, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë


My favourite quote from the book ♥

In one of my second year English literature courses, I was taught to read this book as a story of a woman's oppression and looming entrapment in patriarchy, and I believed that for years until I re-read this book this year. In the time that has passed between readings, I’ve grown, matured, and discovered real love. Under that light, the book reads much differently, and I can identify with much of what Jane feels. To me (and I don't care what my English profs would say about it), this is a story of growth, of perseverance, and definitely of love. It’s perhaps more lucrative to be cynical and force jaded readings into this novel, but I don't believe that was Brontë's intention.

The imagery of this quote is breathtakingly beautiful.

jellyfish

"Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, [the jellyfish] has for its defence the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its going and its will."

--Ursula Le Guin, Lathe of Heaven

jane eyre

"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."

--From the preface to Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë

great expectations

"So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise."

-- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, vol. 2, chap. viii

vanity fair

"When one man has been under very remarkable obligation to another, with whom he subsequently quarrels, a common sense of decency, as it were, makes of the former a much severer enemy than a mere stranger would be. To account for your own hardheartedness and ingratitude in such a case, you are bound to prove the other party's crime. It is not that you are a selfish, brutal, and angry at the failure of a speculation--no, no-- it is that your partner has led you into it by the basest treachery and with the most sinister motives. From a mere sense of consistency, a persecutor is bound to shew that the fallen man is a villain-- otherwise he the persecutor is a wretch himself."

--W. M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, chapter XVIII

freedom

--via Postsecret

the invention of the world

"people are never so horrified as when they see others doing what they'd like to do themselves."

--j. hodgins

the invention of the world

discoveries

"In each century since the beginning of the world, wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century, more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new century, hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first, people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can't be done, then they see it can be done-- then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago."

-- Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret Garden (Ch. 27, "In the Garden")

small but mighty

-- via postsecret

reverse labour

"A phrase from, of all things, a Carrie Fisher novel steadied me after my father died. She described grief as a “reverse labor,” the contractions of which grow further and further apart until finally they stop altogether. Remembering that helped me through the spasms, and also helped me not feel guilty when normality wished to return again."

-- via Joshreads.com

sirop de poteau

"Québécois sometimes refer to imitation maple syrup as sirop de poteau ("pole syrup"), a joke referring to the syrup as having been made by tapping telephone poles."

--via Wikipedia