"Ah," said Dolly, with soothing gravity, "it's like the night and the morning, and the sleeping and the waking, and the rain and the harvest--one goes and the other comes, and we know nothing how nor where.  We may strive and scrat and fend, but it's little we can do arter all--the big things come and go wi' no striving o' our'n--they do, that they do."
 ~ 
Silas Marner
 by 
George Eliot
A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink.
 ~ 
Silas Marner
 by 
George Eliot
The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.  Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.
 ~ 
Vanity Fair
 by 
William Makepeace Thackeray
"We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us."
 ~ 
Anne Of Avonlea
 by 
Lucy Maud Montgomery
"We must have ideals and try to live up to them, even if we never quite succeed.  Life would be a sorry business without them.  With them it's grand and great."
 ~ 
Anne Of Avonlea
 by 
Lucy Maud Montgomery
"There are so many unpleasant things in the world already that there is no use in imagining any more."
 ~ 
Anne Of Avonlea
 by 
Lucy Maud Montgomery
"In this world you've just got to hope for the best and prepare for the worst and take whatever God sends."
 ~ 
Anne Of Avonlea
 by 
Lucy Maud Montgomery
"When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books; for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved."
 ~ 
The Prince and The Pauper
 by 
Mark Twain
"O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!  It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on."
 ~ 
Othello
 by 
William Shakespeare
Conventionality is not morality.  Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.
 ~ 
Jane Eyre
 by 
Charlotte Bronte