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memoirs of an arabian princess


That the Arab treats his partner contemptuously is a myth. Our creed alone would prevent this, and if by it's terms woman is in some respects rated man's inferior, she is at the same time recommended to his protection because of her weakness. A devout, God-fearing Moslem displays just as much kindness as a well-bred, cultivated European, perhaps even governs himself with more rigour, since he never forgets the omnipresence of the lord, nor till his last breath relinquishes his firm belief in Divine retribution.


Of course you find wretches everywhere who deny their wives the proper amiability and consideration, but i can conscientiously affirm that here i have heard of tender husbands who beat their wivesthan at home; a good Arab would think he was dishonouring himself did he thus transgress. With the Negroes the matter stands differently on the plantations. I have often interfered and made peace between a pair lustily belabouring each other.

William Thackeray to Isabella Shaw

My love for you is greater than I thought, for it has withstood this terrible three days trial. i have tried to leave you & you will hardly credit me that i felt obliged to return- for i do not beleive in spite of this heartlessness on your part, that you can ever be other than my wife. . .

Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn

Myne awne Sweetheart, this shall be to advertise you of the great ellingness that i find here since your departing, for i ensure you, me thinketh the Tyme longer since your departing now last than i was wont to do a whole Fortnight; i think your Kindness and my Fervence of Love causeth it. . . .

wishing myself (specially an Evening) in my Sweethearts Armes whose pritty Lips I trust shortly to kysse. . . .

Samuel Coleridge to Mary Evans


Too long has my heart been the torture house of suspense. After infinite struggles of irresolution, i will at last dare request of you, Mary, that you will communicate to me whether or not you are engaged to Mr ______. I conjure you not to consider this request as presumptious indelicacy.

For four years i have endeavoured to smother a very ardent attachment; in what degree i have succeeded you must know better than I can.

At first i voluntarily invited the recollection of (your) qualities into my mind. I made them the perpetual object of my reveries, yet i entertained no one sentiment beyond that of the immediate pleasure annexed to the thinking of you. At length it became a habit. I awoke from the delusion, and found that I had unwittingly harboured a passion which i felt neither the power nor the courage to subdue.

Robert Burns to Aretha M'lehose


Oh, Clarinda! What do i owe to Heaven for blessing me with such a piece of exalted excellence as you! . . . Tell me, were you studious to please me last night? I am sure you did it to transport. . . .

John Keats to Fanny Browne

I see in life nothing but the certainty of your Love- convince me of it my sweetest. If i am not somehow convinced i shall die of agony.

I do not pretend to say i have more feeling than my fellows- but i wish you seriously to look over my letters both kind and unkind and consider whether the Person who wrote them can be able to endure much longer the agonies and uncertainties which you are so peculiarly made to create

My recovery of bodily health will be of no benefit to me if you are not all mine when i am well. For God's sake save me- or tell me my passion is of too awful a nature for you. Again, God bless you.

Lord Byron to Contessa Guiccioli


You sometimes tell me that i have been your first real love- and i assure you that you shall be my last passion.I may well hope not to fall in love again, now that everything has become indifferent to me. Before i knew you- i felt an interest in many women, but never in one only. Now i love you, there is no other woman in the world for me.

My sweetest treasure- i am trembling as i write to you, as i trembled when i saw you- but no longer- with such sweet heavy heartbeats. i have a thousand things to say to you- and, alas, how many Sighs! Love me, not as i love you, for that would make you too unhappy, love me not as i deserve, for that would be too little, but as your heart commands. Do not doubt me- i am and always shall be your most tender lover.

PS  How much happier than i is this letter: which in a few days will be in your hands- and perhaps may even be brought to yuor lips. With such a hope I am kissing it before it goes. Goodbye- my soul.

My Beloved

Classic Messages of Love


henriette to casanova

I have been forced to leave you, my only friend, but do not add to your grief by thinking of mine. . . . we can boast that we were perfectly happy for three whole months; how many mortals can say as much?

I do not even know who you are, but there is no one in the world so familiar with your every thought as i am. I shall never have another lover in my life, but in this you must not imitate me. I hope that you will love again, and that your good genius will help you to find another henriette. Adieu adieu.


( )

pompeii by robert harris


There was no sense of panic in neapolis, a sleepy place at the best of times. He had far outpaced the weary, laden refugees emerging from beneath the hail of rock and no word of the catastrophe enveloping Pompeii had yet reached the city.

The boy slave by kola onadipe





It was on this girl fatima therefore that i fixed my gaze. She blushed as i did so. She hid her face and when she looked up again I was still looking at her. I liked this girl very much and wanted to speak with her. But I could not speak to her.

Jennings, of Course!


"I am appalled to think of a grown man treating the boys in his care in this high-handed manner, and riding roughshod over their feelings"

Jennings and Darbyshire listened with a warm glow of approval. Miss Thorpe had the right ideas! It was not often they had the pleasure of hearing Mr Wilkin's character torn to shreds by one of his own age group.

But her next words shattered the warm glow and wiped the satisfied smile from their lips. " It simply isnt good enough! i shall go straight up to Linbury Court and lodge a complaint in the strongest possible terms"

Jennings caught his breath in dismay and Darbyshire was so shaken that he clutched at the table for support.

quote from igbo olodumare (translated)


"Who are you? What are you? What do you amount to?  What do you rank as? What are you looking for? What do you want? What are you looking at? What do you see? What are you considering? What affects you? Where are you coming from? Where are you going? Where do you live? Where do you roam? Answer me! Human being, answer me in a word! One thing is certain- you have got into trouble today, you have climbed a tree beyond it's topmost leaves. . .  you saw me and I saw you, you were approaching and I was approaching, and yet you did not take to your heels. . . have you never heard of me? Has no one told you about me?"

“She did not delude herself into expecting Francis to love her. He had never been taught how to love, but had an arresting way of looking pleased at Adah's achievements.”

second class citizen by buchi emecheta



“At home in Nigeria, all a mother had to do for a baby was wash and feed him and, if he was fidgety, strap him onto her back and carry on with her work while that baby slept. But in England she had to wash piles and piles of nappies, wheel the child round for sunshine during the day, attend to his feeds as regularly as if one were serving a master, talk to the child, even if he was only a day old! Oh, yes, in England, looking after babies was in itself a full-time job.”

the palm wine drinkard by amos tutuola

“I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. I had no other work more than to drink palm-wine in my life. - - - But when my father noticed that I could not do any work more than to drink, he engaged an expert palm-wine-tapster for me; he had no other work more than to tap palm-wine every day. So my father gave me a palm-tree farm which was nine miles square and it contained 560,000 palm-trees, and this palm-wine tapster was tapping one hundred and fifty kegs of palm-wine every morning, but before 2 o’clock p.m., I would have drunk it all; after that he would go and tap another 75 kegs.”

There you are. She's your hare."

"Hare!" exclaimed Maria. "Why, I thought she was an extra-large rabbit!"

the little white horse

"Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food;"

Obika was one of the handsomest young men in Umuaro and all the surrounding districts. His face was very finely cut and his nose stood gem, like the note of a gong. His skin was, like his father's, the colour of terracotta. People said of him (as they always did when they saw great comeliness) that he was not born for these parts among the Igbo people of the forests; that in his previous life he must have sojourned among the riverain folk whom the Igbo called Olu.

But two things spoilt Obika. He drank palm wine to excess, and he was given to sudden and fiery anger.

"I am one of those they have chosen to go to Okperi tomorrow and bring the loads of our new teacher."

"Oduche!"

"Father!"

"Listen to what I shall say no. When a handshake goes beyond the elbow we know it has turned to another thing. It was I who sent you to join those people because of my friendship to the white man, Wintabota. He asked me to send one of my children to learn the ways of his people and I agreed to send you. I did not send you so that you might leave your duty in my household. Do you hear me? Go and tell the people who chose you to go to Okperi that I said no. Tell them that tomorrow I the day on which my sons and my wives and my son's wife work for me. Your people should know the custom of his land; if they don't you must tell them. Do you hear me?"

[Akuebue] was the only man among Ezeulu's friends and kinsmen who still came now and again to see him. But when he came he sat in silence or spoke about unimportant things. Today, however, he could not but touch on a new development in the crisis which troubled him. Perhaps Akuebue was the only man in Umuaro who knew that Ezeulu was not deliberately punishing the six villages. He knew that the Chief Priest was helpless; that a thing greater than nte had been caught in nte's trap. So whenever he came to visit Ezeulu he kept clear of the things nearest to their thoughts because they were past talking. But today he could not keep silence over the present move of the Christians to reap the harvest of Umuaro.

"It troubles me," he said, "because it looks like the saying of our ancestors that when brothers fight to death a stranger inherits their father's estate."

arrow of God by chinua achebe

The long uproar that followed was largely of approbation. Nwaka had totally destroyed Ezeulu's speech. The last glancing blow which killed it was the hint that the Chief Priest's mother had been a daughter of Okperi. The assembly broke up into numerous little groups of people talking to those who sat nearest to them. One man said that Ezeulu had forgotten whether it was his father or his mother who told him about the farmland. Speaker after speaker rose and spoke to the assembly until it was clear that all the six villages stood behind Nwaka. Ezeulu was not the only man of Umuaro whose mother had come from Okperi. But none of the others dared go to his support

People of the City by cyprian ekwensi


"Girls ripen quickly in the city- the men are so impatient"