[Shayne Parkinson]

In that case you may well be chagrined, Issy, as Little Women is indeed the answer! To give it its context:

"Amy's lecture did Laurie good, though, of course, he did not own it till long afterward. Men seldom do, for when women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole."

1. "Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?" A Room With a View by E.M. Forster - Poohbear

2. "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?" Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - Issybird

3. "If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien - Poohbear

4. "When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole." Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - Issybird

5. "We are never told what would have happened." The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis - title from Bookpossum, author from PeterT

6. "No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato.... " Villette by Charlotte Bronte - Issybird

7. "I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours." Three men in a Boat by Jerome K.Jerome - Poohbear

8. "She was trusted and valued by her father, loved and courted by all dogs, cats, children, and poor people, and slighted and neglected by everybody else." The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte - title from Bookpossum, author from Orlok

9. "A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry whom she likes." - Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - Poohbear

10. "How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am heart-burned an hour after." Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare - Issybird


We have a tie: eight points each to Issybird and Poohbear. Two points to Bookpossum, one point each to Orlok and PeterT. Plus two coolness points to Stephen's wife for recognising the quotation from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.