“The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.”

“All men are enemies. All animals are comrades”

“Her feelings were her own, and could not be altered from outside. It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.”

“Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.”

“To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.”

“Alas, I am a woman friendless, hopeless!”

“He that commends me to mine own content Commends me to the thing I cannot get. I to the world am like a drop of water That in the ocean seeks another drop, Who, falling there to find his fellow forth, Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself: So I, to find a mother and a brother, In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.”

“There is no creature loves me;And if I die, no soul will pity me.”