Quotes from Books

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Originally Posted by Idril

This is from The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov and I just think it's one of the funniest lines I've ever read,

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I love Master and Margarita and there are couple of discussion threads around the Forum if you would like to have a look at them once you've finished reading. :)

Some more quotes from The Name of the Rose:

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Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected inquiry. When we consdeir a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...

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There are words that give power, otehrs that make us all the more derelict, and to this latter category belong the vulgar words of the simple, to whom the Lord has not granted the boon of self-expression in the universal tongue of knowledge and power.

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Be on guard, my son... The beauty of the body stops at the skin. If men could see what is beneath the skin,..., they would shudder at the sight of a woman. All that grace consists of mucus and blood, humours and bile. If you think of what is hidden in the nostrols, in the throat, and in the belly, you will find only filth. If it revolts you to touch mucus or dung with your fingertip, how could we desire to embrace the sack that contains that dung?

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After so many years even teh fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?

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Est ubi glorai nunc Babyloiae? Where are the snows of yesteryear? The earth is dancing the dance of Macabre; at times it seems to be that the Danube is crowded with ships loaded with fools going towards a dark place.

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This last quote reminded me of Yossarian's question in Catch-22: "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"

I would like to inform everyone that I have finally finished reading The Name of the Rose so no more quotes! :D

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

I love Master and Margarita and there are couple of discussion threads around the Forum if you would like to have a look at them once you've finished reading. :)

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I will, thank you for mentioning them. I'm cruising through the book, I just can't put it down so I should be done very soon.

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Originally Posted by Schedherazade

Some more quotes from The Name of the Rose:...

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If you liked The Name of the Rose, you should try Q by Luther Blissett. It's actually written by a collaboration of 4 anonymous Italian authors using the name Luther Blissett but that's not really important, what's important is that it's a fascinating book, it takes place during the Reformation but it focuses on the Anabaptists and Catholics, not the Lutherans although they certainly do pop up from time to time. It's not a particularly easy read, much like Name of the Rose but the historical context is riveting and it's interesting to look at the Reformation from a slightly different angle and to learn that those Anabaptists were a violent bunch. :eek:

I'm currently re-reading "The Garden of Forking Paths" by Jorge Luis Borges. Here is a quote:

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...I imagined a labyrinth of labyrinths, a maze of mazes, a twisting, turning, ever-widening labyrinth that contained both past and future and somehow implied the stars. Absorbed in those illusory imaginings, I forgot that I was a pursued man; I felt myself, for an indefinite while, the abstract perceiver of the world.

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"My greatest thought in living is Heathcliff.
If all else perished, and he remained.
I should still continue to be. . . .
Nelly, I am Heathcliff!
He's always, always in my mind:
not as a pleasure . . . but as my own being."

Now I'm reading an Anita Blake novel, Book 9 Obsidian Butterfly let's see, quotes quotes quotes...

'I was covered in blood, but it wasn't mine, so it was okay.'

lol, Truth. God I love Anita Blake :P

I'm reading "True Notebooks" by Mark Salzman (he's writing about teaching a writing class in Juvenile Hall). The inmate boys are discussing how they're going to make themselves look good for the inmate girls who will be at an open mic event. Quote:

"Listen up! I figured out a way to crease our pants using the hot plate."
"Jackson, you gotta get some Scotch tape from the pantry. That way we can make cuffs."

and that's pant leg and sleeve cuffs...not the other kind ;)

"For every complex problem there is a simple solution, and it's wrong."
- Umberto Eco quoting HL Mencken in "Foucault's Pendulum"

From Anna Karenin:

1) "He walked down, for a long while averting his eyes from her, as though she were the sun, but seeing her, as one sees the sun, without looking."

2) "Well, such women do exist...and they are terrible. Woman, don't you know, is the sort of subject that study it as much as you will it is always quite new."

3) "The child's presence called up both in Vronsky and in Anna a feeling akin to that of a sailor who can see by the compass that the direction in which he is swiftly sailing is wide of the proper course, but is powerless to stop. Every moment takes him farther and farther astray, and to admit to himself that he is off his course is the same as admitting final disaster. This child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was the compass which showed them the degree to which they had departed from what they knew but did not want to know."

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Harrison Ford in harris tweed

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Well not really, but I thought I'd give everyone a laugh.

this is from Orwell's "1984" on the rebellion of the proles and when and if that could ever happen.

"Untill they have become conscious they will never rebel, and untill after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."

-Winston Smith

Ian McKellen, an openly gay actor who plays Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code, tried to make light of the controversy:

"I'm very happy to believe that Jesus was married," he said. "I know the Catholic Church has problems with gay people and I thought this would be absolute proof that Jesus was not gay."

That kinda cracked me up. As did the following.

Read this today in Horace's Satires. Horace's slave, Davus, comparing his master's behavior to his own at Saturnalia when all slaves are free to speak without fear of reprecussion and servant becomes master for the day:

Wretch, you who order me around serve another,

Like a wooden puppet jerked by alien strings.

So who is free? The wise man: in command of himself,

Unafraid of poverty, chains, or death, bravely

Defying his passions, despising honours, complete

In himself, smoothed and rounded, so that nothing

External can cling to his polished surface, whom

Fortune by attacking ever wounds herself. Can you

Claim any of this for your own? The woman demands

A fortune, bullies you, slams the door in your face,

Drowns you in cold water, then calls you back! Take your

Neck from the vile yoke. “I’m free, free,” say it! You can’t:

A despot, and no slight one, oppresses your spirit,

Pricking sharp spurs in your tired flanks, yanking when you shy.’

From Oscar Wilde's "De Profundis", his letter to his former lover Lord Alfred Douglas. It was this relationship that eventually landed Wilde in prison, which is where he wrote the work.

“Our ill-fated and most lamentable friendship has ended in ruin and public infamy for me, yet the memory of our ancient affection is often with me, and the thought that loathing, bitterness and contempt should forever take the place in my heart once held by love is very sad to me . . ."

“I have no doubt that in this letter which I have to write of your life and of mine, of the past and of the future, of sweet things changed to bitterness and of bitter things that may be turned to joy, there will be much that will wound your vanity to the quick. If it prove so, read this letter over and over again till it kills your vanity. If you find in it something of which you are unjustly accused, remember that one should be thankful that there is any fault of which one can be unjustly accused. If there be in it one single passage that brings tears to your eyes, weep as we weep in prison where the day no less than the night is set apart for tears."

"Do not be afraid. The supreme vice is shallowness. Everything that is realised is right. Remember also that whatever is misery to you to read, is still greater misery for me to set down. To you the Unseen Powers have been very good. They have permitted you to see the strange and tragic shapes of Life as one sees shadows in a crystal. The head of Medusa that turns living men to stone you have been allowed to look at in a mirror, merely. You yourself have walked freely among the flowers. From me the beautiful world of colour and motion has been taken away."

From Catch-22: "If they wanted to fly combat missions they were insane and they didn't have to fly them, but if they didn't want to fly combat missions they were sane and they had to fly them."

From The Grapes of Wrath: My signature.

Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.
-The Great Gatsby

From The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

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...there's a folk saying about the search which covers the subject: They are looking for something which was never put there.

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