Books Quote by Jane Austen

“In his life he'd passed through long periods of gratefulness and good cheer, but he'd scarcely even imagined this level of thorough contentment with…

— Chad Harbach

“He completely lacked any ardent interest that might have occupied his mind. His interior life was impoverished, had undergone a deterioration so severe that…

— Thomas Mann

“His manner showed a curious mixture of longing and enthusiasm, which is to say that his enthusiasms were always of a wistful sort, and…

— Eleanor Catton

“He had grown fat on solitude, he thought, and had learned to expect nothing from the day but at best a dull contentment. Sometimes…

— Colm Tóibín

“I observed mildness of temper, and unchangeable resolution in the things that he had determined after due deliberation; and no vainglory in those things…

— Marcus Aurelius

“He always kept up his spirits, and was able in literary circles to show that he could hold his own. But he was driven…

— Anthony Trollope

“One that has well digested his knowledge both of books and men, has little enjoyment but in the company of a few select companions.…

— David Hume

“would sometimes say, that if life were made what it might be, by good government and good education, it would be worth having: but…

— Christopher Hitchens

“He had often felt anguish before, and it would be no wonder if it came at such a moment, when he was preparing, the…

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“The melancholy with which it described an inability to live each day to the full, to take every day for what it really was,…

— Nina George

“But he could not tell what that significance was. It was like a message which it was very important for him to receive, but…

— William Somerset Maugham

“[...] I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my…

— Charlotte Brontë