I breathe literature and I have gone through extreme lengths to honor it. Words are not just ink on paper. They are air, rhythm, and pulse, pulling me up when I was down, keeping me afloat when the tides tried to drown me, and carrying me farther than my own strength ever could.
As I wandered into the tales of Tehran, the war zones of Russia, and the heartbreak of characters, I realized that sometimes a single sentence can stay with you longer than an entire book. Some lines have a way of reaching into your heart, pulling you into a moment, and reminding you of something you didn’t even know you felt.
Over the years, I have underlined, scribbled in margins, and saved these little treasures. The words that felt too beautiful to let them slip away. Allow me to share them with you and let them live beyond me. I hope they find a home in your heart as well.
- “These violent delights have violent ends.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
- “I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
- “I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.”
— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
- “We are all human, aren’t we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.”
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
- “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
- “Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.”
— Marcus Zusak, The Book Thief
- “I am haunted by humans.”
— Marcus Zusak, The Book Thief
- “There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
- “She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”
— J.D. Salinger, A Girl I Knew
- “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
- “The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves, until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.”
— Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
- “For you, a thousand times over.”
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
- “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”
— Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
- “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
— George Orwell, Animal Farm
- “You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”
— Cormac McCarthy, The Road
- “She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”
— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
- “The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief, the closer is God!”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
- “Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
- “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
— Albert Camus, The Rebel
- “Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”
— Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
- “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
- “Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.”
— Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
- “And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be— and whenever I look up, there will be you.”
— Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd
- “One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”
— Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
- “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
— Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
- “You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.”
— Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
- “I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. But there are moments when I feel extraordinary, simply because of the person I love.”
— Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
- “He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
- “I am half agony, half hope.” — Jane Austen, Persuasion
- “And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”
— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
- “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”
— Muriel Rukeyser
- “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
- “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
— Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- “Whatever our struggles, we are made of stardust and stories.”
— Carl Sagan, Cosmos
- “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.”
— T.S. Eliot
- “The graveyard is the richest place on earth.” — Les Brown
- “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
- “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
- “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
- “You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link. This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link.”
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
- “Fear is the mind-killer.”
— Frank Herbert, Dune
- “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
- “You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
— Virginia Woolf
- “Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth
- “I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.”
— Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
- “To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
— J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
- “The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.”
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
- “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
- “The world was hers for the reading.”
— Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- “When I look at my life and its secret colors, I feel like bursting into tears.”
— Albert Camus, A Happy Death
- “Pain demands to be felt.”
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
- “If I know what love is, it is because of you.”
— Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund
- “You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.”
— E.E. Cummings
- “Even in the darkest times, we can find happiness, if only we remember to turn on the light.”
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
- “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
— Ernest Hemingway
- “There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”
— Aldous Huxley
- “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
— Aristotle
- “You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live.”
— Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
- “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
- “Death ends a life, not a relationship.”
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
- “Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet.”
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
- “I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love.”
— Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
- “I am yours, don’t give myself back to me.”
— Rumi
- “I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
- “You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.”
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company
- “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”
— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
- “I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
- “You are my courage, as I am your conscience.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
- “Each time you happen to me all over again.”
— Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
- “Love is the voice under all silences.”
— E.E. Cummings
- “You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?”
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
- “The darker the night, the brighter the stars.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
- “We accept the love we think we deserve.”
— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
- “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
- “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”
— William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
- “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
- “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
— Stephen King
- “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
— Mark Twain
- “All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
- “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
— Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
- “To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.”
— Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
- “Bran thought about it. ‘Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?’ ‘That is the only time a man can be brave,’ his father told him.”
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
- “All men have the stars, but they are not the same things for different people.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
- “I am rooted, but I flow.”
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
- “The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
- “You are my dearest one. My reason for life.”
— Ian McEwan, Atonement
- “To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed.”
— Bill Watterson
- “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
— Oscar Wilde
- “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
- “The sun shines not on us but in us.”
— John Muir
- “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”
— Oscar Wilde
- “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
- “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”
— George Orwell, 1984
- “The past beats inside me like a second heart.”
— John Banville, The Sea
- “That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
— Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
- “Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept.”
— Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies
These beautiful sentences in literature have helped me name misery and grief I was not able to convey in my own language. They have healed me and that is the power of literature. Lines written decades or centuries ago arrive in your life at the exact moment you need it, whispering that you are not alone, giving you hope, and reminding you that there is so much beauty in the world that you haven’t seen yet.
I know each one of our journeys is different. Perhaps the lines that have cradled me on my toughest days may not be the same ones that have held you in your darkest nights. Tell us the words that have stayed with you along the way. What sentence from a book has healed you, moved you, or stayed in your memory?
Leave it in the comments and maybe your favorite words will become someone else’s lifeline too.
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