I am going to be in a wedding next weekend and I am trying to write my matron of honor speech. It’s not really going well 🙁 So in the meantime, here are some of my favorite quotes:

“Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help.” — Psalm 22:11

“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, ‘Oh, nothing!’ Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts — not to hurt others.” — George Eliot, Middlemarch

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” — George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action […] they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul.” — George Eliot, Middlemarch

“It is not violence that best overcomes hate—nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.” — Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“‘Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.'” — Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you — haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe — I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” — Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights