I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed? "For beauty," I replied. "And I for truth - the two are one; We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a-night, We talked between the rooms, Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names.

She was once ill, pale, and had lost all her freshness. I only adored her the more for it, and fell in love with the decay of her beauty.

I want a hand to guide me, an eye to cheer me, a bosom to repose on; all which I shall never have, but shall stagger into my grave, old before my time, unloved and unlovely, unless S. L. keeps her faith with me.

Silence is the ornament of your sex; and in silence, if there be not wisdom, there is safety.

A sister's hand may draw a partial likeness, but still it will be a likeness.

You say that you are proud; I am prouder. – You will be content with indiscriminate admiration – nothing will content me but what is select. As long as I have the use of my reason – as long as my heart can feel the delightful sense of a "well-earned praise", I will fix my eye on the highest pitch of excellence, and steadily endeavour to attain it.

The room in which we were expected to sit was a stiffly-furnished, ugly apartment; but that in which we did sit was what Mr Holbrook called the counting-house, where he paid his labourers their weekly wages at a great desk near the door. The rest of the pretty sitting-room - looking into the orchard, and all covered over with dancing tree-shadows - was filled with books. They lay on the ground, they covered the walls, they strewed the table. He was evidently half ashamed and half proud of his extravagance in this respect. They were of all kinds - poetry and wild weird tales prevailing. He evidently chose his books in accordance with his own tastes, not because such and such were classical or established favourites.

What, I ask, are the dangers of this freedom? Fatherless children? Well, what does that matter in a republic where no individual can have any mother but he fatherland, where whoever is born is a child of the fatherland?

She caught a tube to Shepherd’s Bush, where there were no shepherds and no bushes: only a foreigner can thoroughly appreciate how much of its heritage a country has lost. No saints or woods in St. John’s Wood, no knights or bridges in Knightsbridge, no black friars in Blackfriars. England’s Englishness was tourist brochure stiff, history book stuff, like the fairytale palaces of Kraków surrendering to acid rain and Kodak flashes, like Queen Anna Jagiellonka, buried even deeper by wars and ideology. The English Queen was only good for putting on tea towels and coffee mugs for Americans to take home, and all those castles were just crumbling to rubble, waiting to be used as backdrops in Hollywood movies about Robin Hood.

De skulle sett meg på ballene i hvit gaze og med brandgule buketter. Men alt er jo forfengelighet her i verden. Jeg tror, at de, som er smukke og får de største gaver, av Gud stilles så høit, for at de skal dale som et praktfult stjerneskudd, som slukkes. Gud morer seg visst med sådant noe. For hvad skulle han ellers ha for adspredelser, hvad, fru Kant?

— Man må tro på legene, ikke sant, fru Kant? Dannede mennesker er opdratt til det. – Også utsetter man sine nærmeste for å gå til grunne av bare dannelse! ropte Else forbitret.

Det var det samme urgamle op igjen. Autoritetstroen som i alle århundreder hadde bragt menneskene til å tro på og bøye sig for det ene menneske. Det ene menneske som hadde menneskeforaktelig frekkhet nok til å optre som den, som førte an og visste beskjed – "Vi med vår professor Hieronimus!"

Dypt rotfestet måtte den være, denne gru for å glide inn i tilintetgjørelsens evige mørke, siden hun enda blev ved med å slepe sig over dagen, gjennem natten — over dagen og gjennom natten. - Nå ja, men denne siste utvei løp jo ikke fra en.

A book may be on any queer subject, but one can at least always be certain how to turn a page and read it.

In town a man can live for a hundred years and never notice that he’s long been dead and buried.

Jeg fryser, for jeg er redd det skal komme dager da kvinner som jeg blir tatt av dage av den alminnelige kirkens menn. Og hvorfor vil de tas av dage, nådige biskop? Fordi de minner dere om at dere har fornektet deres egen sjel og utrustning. Og for hvem? Jo, for Gud, sier dere, for ham som har skapt en himmel over dere og dessuten en jord der det vitterlig er kvinner som setter dere til verden.

'Da jeg kom til dette huset var allerede ligusterhekkene der. Det er mange av dem. Når stormen kommer, hviner de som stål. Vet de, når man er vant til det, er det som å høre sitt eget hjerte.'

Ja fy for satan, ja! Tror du, jeg var kommet på dette av mig selv? Det er jo nettop min ulykke at all ting er blitt besudlet for mig. Fra nu av tror jeg ekkelt og stygt om alle, alle mennesker.

'Over!' repeated Mr Meagles, who appeared (though without any ill-nature) to be in that peculiar state of mind in which the last word spoken by anybody else is a new injury. 'Over! and why should I say no more about it because it's over?'

There was neither education nor progress; generations were multiplied to no purpose. Since each one always began from the same point, centuries went by with all the crudeness of the first ages; the species was already old, and man remained ever a child.