Quotes from Books

[cacian]

from The Day The Earth Stood Still
''Barnhardt: Have you tested this theory?
Klaatu: I find it works well enough to get me from one planet to another.''

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

This one is interesting. Ulau shutting himself in the tower amongst his wealth.
Why on earth would he do such a thing?

It wasn’t Ulaù that was shut in the tower. In fact it was Ulaù that ordered the khalif be “shut up” in the tower filled with gold as punishment against the khalif for not employing his great wealth to form a greater defense against Ulaù’s attack and subsequent capture of Baldach.

Another quote - of a quote:

From Anthony Cave Brown Bodyguard of Lies Vol I includes this quote of British RAF Group Captain John Stagg speaking about Eisenhower who had just been appointed as the Supreme Commander of the Allied invasion of Europe:

“With a broad smile, an athletic movement like a gymnastic instructor about to give his first lesson and in a trim, well tailored battledress and well ironed creases all in the right places he looked in the first class mental and physical condition”.
Eisenhower’s grin, they began to say, was worth an army.

.

[The Truth]

“Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?"

"I give."

"You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.”

― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

[bouquin]

'As a matter of simple logic, there's no difference at all, as I can see, between the man who's greedy for material treasure - or even intellectual treasure - and the man who's greedy for spiritual treasure. As you say, treasure's treasure, God damn it, and it seems to me that ninety percent of all the world-hating saints in history were just as acquisitive and unattractive, basically, as the rest of us are.'


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'There are nice things in the world - and I mean nice things. We're all such morons to get so sidetracked. Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.'

[Gregory Samsa]

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine. - The Unbearable Lightness of Being

[Big Penny]

"Blades don't need reloading."

Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide

[bouquin]

"We must not always talk in the market place of what happens to us in the forest."


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"Dost thou think I have been to the forest so many times, and have yet no skill to judge who else has been there?"


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"Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!"

[Snowqueen]

He saw financiers whose immense wealth was based on robbery but who were welcome everywhere, in the noblest houses, and also men so respected that ordinary people raised their hats to them as they passed but whose scandalous speculation in state-controlled enterprises was perfectly familiar to all those who knew the shady things that take place behind the scenes.

Bel Ami - Guy de Maupassant

[kev67]

From 1984 by George Orwell.


Unquestionably Syme would be vaporized, Winston thought again. He thought it with a kind of sadness, although well knowing that Syme despised him and slightly disliked him, and was fully capable of denouncing him as a thought-criminal if he saw any reason to do so. There was something subtly wrong with Syme. There was something he lacked: discretion, aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity. You could not say he was unorthodox. He believed in the principle of Ingsoc, he venerated Big Brother, he rejoiced over victories, he hated heretics, not merely with sincerity but with a sort of restless zeal, an up-to-dateness of information, which an ordinary party member did not approach. Yet a faint air of disreputability always clung to him. He said things that would have been better unsaid, he read too many books, he frequented the Chestnut Tree Café, haunt of painters and musicians. There was no law, not even an unwritten law, against frequenting the Chestnut Tree Café, yet the place was somehow ill-omened. The old, discredited leaders of the Party had been used to gather there before they were finally purged. Goldstein himself, it was said, had sometimes been seen there, years and decades ago. Syme's fate was not difficult to forsee. And yet it was a fact that if Syme grasped, even for three seconds, the nature of his, Winston's, secret opinions, he would betray him instantly to the Thought Police. So would anybody else for that matter: but Syme more than most. Zeal was not enough. Orthodoxy was unconsciousness.

[bouquin]

We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it.

[Dreamsqueen]

"On a fine Morning." Thomas Hardt

Whence comes solace? Not from seeing,
What is doing, suffering, being;
Not from noting Life’s conditions,
Not from heeding Time’s monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream
And in gazing at the Gleam

[Snowqueen]

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one . . . just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."



I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool — that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.


Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.


The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

[Emil Miller]

It's pretty obvious that Evelyn Waugh was bitterly affected by having his world swept away by the Second World War and the deadening effect of its aftermath. Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in the short story Love Among the Ruins: an allegory on a dystopian future engendered by post-war socialism in Britain. Notwithstanding the satirical intent, there is more than a little truth in this passage about the trial of a pyromaniac called Miles Plastic.

At last the Bench summed up. He reminded the jury that it was a first principle of the New Law that no man could be held responsible for the consequences of his own acts. The jury must dismiss from their minds the consideration that much valuable property and many valuable lives had been lost and the cause of Personal Recreation gravely retarded. They had merely to decide whether in fact the prisoner had arranged inflammable material at various judiciously selected points in the Institution and had ignited them. If he had done so, and the evidence plainly indicated that he had, he contravened the Standing Orders of the Institution and was thereby liable to the appropriate penalties.
Thus directed, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty coupled with a recommendation of mercy towards the various bereaved persons who from time to time in the course of the hearing had been committed for contempt. The Bench reprimanded the jury for presumption and impertinence in the matter of the prisoners held in contempt, and sentenced Miles to residence during the State's pleasure at Mountjoy Castle( the ancestral seat of a maimed V.C. of the Second World War, who had been sent to a Home for the Handicapped when the place was converted in to a gaol)

[hawthorns]

"Gabriel was paler now. His eyes were more meditative, and his expression was more sad. He had passed through an ordeal of wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away. He had sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very slime-pits of Siddim; but there was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not. And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the loss gain."

Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

[Snowqueen]

Once I quarrelled with our late mamma: she stromed and would not listen to me....At last I said to her, "Of course you cannot understand me: we belong to different generations," I said. She was dreadfully offended but I thought to myself, ''It can't be helped. It is a bitter pill but she must swallow it."You see, now our time has come, and our seccessors say to us, You are not our generation: sawllow your pill."

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

[llall]

Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

The Quiet American, Graham Greene

[Gregory Samsa]

"I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”

― Franz Kafka, Franz Kafka's The Castle

[aaron stark]

"I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”

― Franz Kafka, Franz Kafka's The Castle
Holy smokes. That's beautiful...

[Gregory Samsa]

“History, which is a simple whore, has no decisive moments but is a proliferation of instants, brief interludes that vie with one another in monstrousness.” - Roberto Bolaño, 2666

[Clovis]

Though this might hardly be considered funny to many, I really busted a gut reading this.


'..a "horribly soft" male voice "whispering" a whole string of "nasty things" to her, wicked things, and the worst of it was that the fellow had said he lived in the same building and why, if she was so keen on intimacies, did she look for them so far away, he was willing and able to offer her every conceivable variety of intimacy...' - Heinrich Böll/The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

[Babyguile]

“History, which is a simple whore, has no decisive moments but is a proliferation of instants, brief interludes that vie with one another in monstrousness.” - Roberto Bolaño, 2666

What on Earth?!

[Snowqueen]

''What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust?''

Hamlet by Shakespeare

[Phangirl7]

"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong, he was arrested one fine morning."
First line of The Trial by Franz Kafka.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

"Well, what can I tell you? I read certain books and write others...
I read thick ones and write thin ones."
"That's a bit vague"
"When things are too clear thay cease to be interesting"

Solzhenitsyn August 1914-The Red Wheel

[Snowqueen]

''Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.''


Hamlet by Shakespeare


"Now, you wait right here till I come back, for I want to eat barbecue with you. And don’t you go off philandering with those other girls, because I'm mighty jealous, " came the incredible words from red lips with a dimple on each side; and briskly black lashes swept demurely over green eyes. "I won't, " he finally managed to breathe, never dreaming that she was thinking he looked like a calf waiting for the butcher.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

[ksvane]

"When summer comes to Nebraska, each farmhouse is a ship sailing a vast green ocean." -Stephen King.
I really like that line although I have never been to Nebraska, let alone the US. But the house I grew up in was surrounded by fields, and King flawlessly manages to describe the sensation of how fertile fields look like lively green oceans when the wind blows.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

As I shovelled down the meal I could feel Perdito thrilling at each mouthful, impatient already for desert. Afterwords he'd want me to go back the treehouse. I'd sit on the roof reading my latest Silver Surfer magazine, and he'd luxuriate in the sensation of evening sunshine on the back of my neck, soaking up the Roman purple of the flowering clematis that scrambled through the branches of cedar
Mark Bastable -The Penny Falls

[Inky]

"The strange thing was, he wanted to like everyone. He just couldn't find a way to do it."

"Ishmael gave himself to the writing of it, and as he did so he understood this, too: that accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart."

- Snow Falling on Cedars. Can't say I love the book, but some lines really stick out to me.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

“The peasant without land of his own lends a ready ear to false doctrine, and is susceptible to those who urge him to satisfy his desire for land by force. The solid peasant on land of his own is a barrier against all destructive movements, against any form of communism, which is why all the socialists are so desperately anxious not to see the peasant released from the slavery of the commune, not to let him build up his strength.” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn from August 1914-The Red Wheel

[cafolini]

Indeed with one exemption. There is a form of socialism where the peasant owns the land in an evolutionary way which is directly opposed to communism. Such is democracy and it will be globalized. Solzhenitsyn was correct 99 % of the time, but he misunderstood the meaning of Fabianism. Perhaps in this context there have been no countries that are in the ultimate analysis more sociaoistic than USA and UK.

[Snowqueen]

''The night was very quiet. It was always quiet except on moonlight nights. Darkness held a vague terror for these people, even the bravest among them. Children were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits ………….. On the moonlight nights it was different. The happy voices of children playing in open fields would be heard. As the Ibo say "When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk."



Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

[Pensive]

'I love you; I shall never love anybody else. Marry me or leave me; think what you like of me - I don't care a straw.' At the moment, however, speech or silence seemed immaterial and she merely clapped her hands together and looked at the distant woods with rust-like bloom on their brown and the green and blue landscape through the steam of her own breath. It seemed a mere toss up whether she said 'I love you' or 'I love the beech-trees' or only 'I love - I love'. - Night and Day by Virginia Woolf

[Senserial]

From one of my favourite books, "Lord of the Rings":

“Where there's life there's hope, and need of vittles.”

[hannah_arendt]

From one of my favourite books, "Lord of the Rings":

“Where there's life there's hope, and need of vittles.”

It`s one of my favourites too.:)

[Sweetgirl]

I really like this quote from "The Hunger Games" (the 1st book)

“Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!”
-Effie Trinket

[thelastmelon]

My favorite quote from my favorite novel:

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
- Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë.

[hannah_arendt]

My favorite quote from my favorite novel:

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
- Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë.

It is my favourite too:)

I like also:

"you can transmute love, ignore it muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you"
E. M. Forster, "A room with a view"

"I`ll tell you what love is. It`s a blind devotion, unquestioning self-humililiation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the shilter"

Ch. Dickens, "Great Expectations"

[Snowqueen]

“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

[petermcelwee]

"The simple law of the universe is that you create your own reality"

The Jetstream of Success by Julian Pencilliah

[Marbles]

"Remember, old friend, I'm not shooting you. It's the revolution that's shooting you".

__Colonel Aureliano Buendia to General Moncada, in One Hundred Years of Solitude of Gabriel Marquez.

[Snowqueen]

"Most of all," Hook was saying passionately, "I want their captain, Peter Pan. 'Twas he cut off my arm." He brandished the hook threateningly. "I've waited long to shake his hand with this. Oh, I'll tear him!"
"And yet," said Smee, "I have often heard you say that hook was worth a score of hands, for combing the hair and other homely uses."
"Ay," the captain answered. "if I was a mother I would pray to have my children born with this instead of that," and he cast a look of pride upon his iron hand and one of scorn upon the other.

Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie