“Because he wanted nothing from her; this was a generous, expansive feeling, unattached to the possibility of gratification; it was the simple happiness that came from knowing that one particular person was alive in the world” LoveRomanticJane Austen S World Book:Longbourn Source: Longbourn
“Sarah was soon lugging pasteboard boxes, paper packages and rolled samples of wallpaper. She had seen all of this before: she had daydreamed it. It was all very fine, but it was not as lovely as the daydream, and the packages slithered and slipped from her grip, and a box dug into her side, and how could it be that one printed paper was so vitally, importantly lovely and another was entirely dismissable, or that any or that any of it really mattered so very much, or indeed at all?” PackagesMaterialistic SocietyWallpaperDay Dreams Author:Jo Baker
“The young ladies might behave like they were smooth and sealed as alabaster statues underneath their clothes, but then they would drop their soiled shifts on the bedchamber floor, to be whisked away and cleansed, and would thus reveal themselves to be the frail, leaking, forked bodily creatures that they really were. Perhaps that was why they spoke instructions at her from behind an embroidery hoop or over the top of a book: she had scrubbed away their sweat, their stains, their monthly blood; she knew they weren’t as rarefied as angels, and so they just couldn’t look her in the eye.” ImperfectionRegency EraClass Divide Book:Longbourn Source: Longbourn
“It was a thought, that. Not to attach yourself to a man, but to confront instead the open world, the wide fields of France and Spain, the ocean, anything. Not just to hitch a lift with the first fellow who looked as though he knew where he was going, but just to go.” MenWorldFirstsFieldsOceanFellowsWideFranceLiftsSpain Book:Longbourn Source: Longbourn
“Things could change so entirely, in a heartbeat; the world could be made entirely anew, because someone was kind.” WorldKindMadeHeartbeat Author:Jo Baker
“Threads that drift alone will sometimes simply twine themselves together, without need for spindle or distaff: brought into each other’s ambit, they bind themselves tight with the force of their own torsion. And this same torsion can, in the course of things, bundle the resulting cord back upon itself, ravelling it up into a skein, returning to the point of its beginning.” NeedsSometimesTogetherCoursesForceThreadCordsBundles Author:Jo Baker
“Words had become overnight just little coins, insignificant and unfreighted, to be exchanged for ribbons, buttons, for an apple or an egg.” LittlesApplesEggsButtonsCoinsInsignificantRibbons Author:Jo Baker
