the Goodreads Team asked Elisabeth Barrett:

What's the most romantic line you've ever read?

Elisabeth Barrett I'm a huge Jane Austen fan, and one of my favorite lines in literature comes from Persuasion, a second-chance-at-love story.

In the book, wealthy Anne Elliot falls in love with Frederick Wentworth, a young sailor with modest prospects. She is persuaded to call off the burgeoning romance by a well-meaning family friend (as well as by pressure from her own family). Years later, Anne’s family is in reduced circumstances, and Wentworth returns, flush with experience and money from his time at sea. He’s Captain Wentworth now, and he’s never forgotten the bitter sting of Anne’s rejection so many years earlier. Anne confesses (on behalf of all women) to “loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone,” but Wentworth, too, has held a torch for Anne.

He pens her a letter in which he writes:

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope ... I have loved none but you."

I swoon every single time I read that line. Every. Single. Time.

flag