What is your favorite quote? And why?

Come live with me, and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

~ (from Christopher Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd to His Love c. 1589)

Wow...4 posts in a row :D

"An urge towards love pushed to its limits, is an urge towards death."

"No kind of sensation is keener and more active than that of pain; its impressions are unmistakable."

"Happiness lies only in that wich excites, and the only thing that excites is crime."

"The idea of god is the sole wrong for wich I cannot forgive mankind."

Marquis de Sade

I think edna millay?

“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.”

Greek Proverb

any quote from lord of the rings will do me. :p

Ashes and dust and thirst there is, and pits, pits pits, and orcses, thousands of orcses, and the great eye watching, watching. -JRR Tolkein

"God is a comedian performing before an audience that afraid to laugh" Friedrich Nietzsche

Not all who wander are lost.
J.R.R Tolken

Quote:

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Originally Posted by apstudent

The only absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths.

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Oh 'tis bitter wrong. We just don't know what truth's are, but, to be sure, they are there.

To whoever submitted:

Tis better to have loved and lost
than to have never loved at all.

I would reply:

tis better to have never read at all
than to have read Tennyson.

"The stars are threshed, and the souls are threshed from their husks." -Blake

"...Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.
Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages
And all the drop-scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce."- Yeats (Lapis Lazuli)

"Whence did all that fury come? From empty tomb or virgin womb?
St. Joseph thought the world would melt, but liked the way his finger smelt."
-Yeats (A stick of Incense)

"As every Joy is foundering in the whirls of time, care nesting deep withen the heart will quickly wreak her secret pangs. She sways and claws and never fails to don new masks. As homestead, or as wife and child. Water, fire, poison, knife. We lament the things we never lose, we dread the blow that does not strike." - Geothe (Faust)

"Come forth Lazarus! And Lazarus came fifth and lost the job." - Joyce

"What virtues, Lord, thou makest us abhor!" - Proust

"Only the wastful virtues earn the sun." -Yeats

"When sorrows come, they come not in single spies, but in battalions."
-Shakespeare

The Babylonian starlight brought
a fabulous, formless, darkness in.
Odour of blood when Christ was slain
Made all Platonic tolerance vain
And vain all Doric discipline - Yeats

"Our language sunk under him." - Dr. Johnson on Milton. Man it sure did.

...Him the almighty
Hurled headlong, flaming,
from the etherial sky, down
to bottomless perdition there to dwell in
adamantine chains and penal fire,
him who durst defy the omnipotent to arms.
- Milton
(i dont have it in front of me so forgive me if it isnt quite right, that goes for all these quotes, though im pretty confident about the rest.)

O.k. thats enough, im bored now.

Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind. – Henry James

The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back. - Abigail Van Buren

Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.
- Margaret Chase Smith

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
- Douglas Adams

At least those are in my top thousand!

I'm still reading and have a couple of pages to go on this thread so hope I haven't repeated any. These are a few of my favourite quotes:

“My task which I am trying to achieve is by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel – it is, before all, to make you see. That – and no more, and it is everything.”
‘The N igger of the Narcissus’ –
Joseph Conrad

'Live every day as if it were your last, because one of these days, it will be.'
J. Schwartz

"Fall seven times, stand up eight."
Japanese Proverb

"I know not what weapons world war Three will be fought with, but world war Four will be fought with sticks & stones." - Albert Einstein.

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.-Mark Twai

I have many favorites but the one that I can never forget is;

"A true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection."
-Michelangelo Buonarroti