"The years lay spread out before her, spacious untouched canvases on which she was presently going to paint the picture of her life. It was to be a very beautiful picture, she said to herself with an e..."
- Elizabeth von Arnim
"This was the simple happiness of complete harmony with her surroundings, the happiness that asks for nothing, that just accepts, just breathes, just is."
"Why couldn't two unhappy people refresh each other on their way through this dusty business of life by a little talk - real, natural talk, about what they felt, what they would have liked, what they s..."
"How they had dreamed together, he and she... how they had planned, and laughed, and loved. They had lived for a while in the very heart of poetry."
"Submission to what people call their 'lot' is simply ignoble. If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another."
"What a blessing it is to love books. Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden."
"Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them."
"She would go off in the morning with the punt full of books, and spend long glorious days away in the forest lying on the green springy carpet of whortleberries, reading. She would most diligently wor..."
"I want to be as idle as I can, so that my soul may have time to grow."
"Sometimes callers from a distance invade my solitude, and it is on these occasions that I realize how absolutely alone each individual is, and how far away from his neighbour; and while they talk (gen..."