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Oh, I don't know about ever, or that have changed me, but I'll throw in this one, as I thought about it (again) the other day:
Work is the last refuge of the unimaginative. Oscar Wilde (of course).
Particularly APT, as that foul thing is upon me soon once again.
"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
- Shakespeare
That has got to be my all time favourite. Absolutely perfect.
From Fifth Business by Robertson Favies
Quote:
How happy they might have been if they had recognized and gloried in their talent, confronting the world as gifted egoists, comparable to painters, musicians, or sculptors! But that was not their style. They insisted on degrading their talent to the level of mere acquired knowledge and industry. They wanted to be thought of as wise in the ways of the world and astute in politics; they wanted to demonstrate in themselves what the ordinary fellow might be if he would learn to think straight and be content to reap only where he had sown. The and their wives (women who looked like parrots or bulldogs, most of them) were so humorless, and except when they were drunk, so cross that I thought the ordinary fellow as lucky not to be like them.
I am quite sure if this book had some other title it could have been not called as the book of adventure, or the book for youth, yet one could ask, how many adult really understand the contest of this book and the social history where this book is connected.
There is the philosophical and ideological message of the master Larsen which – not doubt, is titled wrong making the book looking like some imaginative word apart –which it wasn’t, it was real word telling story about average men at their average work at that average contest during the era which have lasted for centuries until the when the new era with the new morder ro-on ro-off stated
These quotations here could have sound just the same if it has been taken twenty year ago,
Rendered curious by this new direction of ideas. I talked with Johansen last night – the first superfluous words with which he has favored me since the voyage began. He left Sweden when he was eighteen, now thirty- eight, and in all the intervening time has not been home once. He had met a townsman couple of year before, in some sailor boarding -house in Chile, so that he knew his mother to be still alive.” She must be a pretty old woman now, he said staring meditatively into the binnacle and then jerking a sharp glance at Harrison who was steering a point off the course.
“When did you last write to her”?
He performed his mental arithmetic aloud, “Eighty – one; on – eighty –two, eh? no –eighty three? yes eighty three. Ten year ago, from some little port in Madagascar. I was trading.
You See,” he went on , as though addressing his neglected mothers across half the girth of the earth.” each year I was going to home. So what the good to write? It was only a year. And each year something happened, and I did not go. But I am mate, now, and when I pay off at Frisco, maybe with five hundred dollars, I will ship myself on a windjammer round the Horn to Liverpool, which will give me more money; and the I will pay my passage home,
"Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'some one,' like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must need pity the Opera ghost..." ~ Gaston Leroux in the Phantom of the Opera
Santa: You know Angelo. You shoulda seen how them sisters beat up on him when he was a kid. One sister throwed him right into a blackboard. That's how come Angelo's such a sweet, considerate man today.
from A Confederacy of Dunces
"It is not to be conceived that a man of three or four-and-twenty should not have liberty of mind or limb to that amount. He cannot want money—he cannot want leisure. We know, on the contrary, that he has so much of both, that he is glad to get rid of them at the idlest haunts in the kingdom. We hear of him for ever at some watering-place or other. A little while ago, he was at Weymouth. This proves that he can leave the Churchills."
Emma by Jane Austen
"Sometimes he lies so much that you wonder, why is he doing it? Two years ago he lied that his wife was dead and that he'd already married another one, and imagine, not a word of it was true: his wife never died, she's still alive and beats him once every three days." - The Brothers Karamozov
To me it seems that youth is like spring, an overpraised season-- delightful if it happens to be a favored one, but in practice very rarely favored and more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting east winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
--Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
Jane EyreQuote:
"The only marked event of the afternoon was, that I saw the girl with whom I had conversed in the veranda, dismissed in disgrace, by Miss Scatcherd, from a history class, and sent to stand in the middle of the large school-room. The punishment seemed to me in a high degree ignominious, especially for so great a girl----she looked thirteen or upwards. I expected she would show signs of great distress and shame; but to my surprise she neither wept or blushed : composed, though grave, she stood, The central mark of all eyes.
"how can she bear it so quietly---so firmly?" I asked of myself.
"were I in her place, it seems to me I should wish the earth to open and swallow me up. She looks as if she were thinking of something beyond her punishment----beyond her situation : of something not round nor before her. I have heard of day-dreams-----is she day-dreaming now? Her eyes are fixed on the floor, but I am sure they do not see it-----her sight seems turned in, gone down into her heart : She is looking at what she can remember, I believe; not at what is really present. I wonder what sort of girl she is---Whether good or naughty".
I don't know if this has been posted yet, I'm not about to go through all those pages to make sure either so...
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They say that there's a broken light for every heart on Broadway, they say that life's a game and they take the board away. They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story, then leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret. In no longer pretty cities, there are fingers in the kitties, there are warrants, forms, and chitties, and a jackboot on the stair. There's sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thine dime, and at least the trains all run on time but they don't go anywhere. Facing their responsibilities either on their back or on their knees, there are ladies who just simply freeze and dare not turn away. And the widows who refuse to cry will be dressed in garter and bow-tie, and be taught to kick their legs up high in this vicious cabaret. At last the 1998 show! The ballet on the burning stage! the documentary upon the fractured screen, the dreadful poem scrawled on the crumpled page! There's a policeman with an honest soul that has seen whose head is on the pole and he grunts and fills his brier bowl with a feeling of unease. Then he briskly frisks the torn remains for a fingerprint or crimson stains and endeavors to ignore the chains that he walks in to his knees. While his master in the dark nearby inspect the hands with brutal eyes that have never brushed a lovers thigh but have squeezed a nations throat. And he hungers in his secret dreams for the harsh embrace of cruel machines but his lover is not what she seems and she will not leave a note.At last the 1998 show! The situation tragedy! Grand
''The only authentic ending is the one provided here :
john and mary die. john and mary die. john and mary die.
So much for endings. beginnings are always fun.... That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.
Now try How and Why...'' Margaret ATWOOD
Then as all souls be emparadised in you, in whom alone I understand, and grow, and see. The rafters of my body, bone, being still with you, the muscle,sinew and vein, which tile this house, will come again.
First came across this in Look Homeward Angel by, Thomas Wolfe. However, this comes from the poem A Valediction of my name in the window by, John Donne.
"And maybe there's a value to being yoked to your enemies. You have more opportunity to learn to love them."
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"Forgiveness is a reflex for when you can't stand what you know."
Why would world care for me when I don't care for him?
Victor Hugo in Hunchback of Notre Dame
I didn't choose this at random but I really like it:
If that old philosopher Schopenhauer is right, happiness is not a human possibility, since it means the absence of pain, which, as an uncle of mine used to say, only occurs when you're dead or dead drunk. So there's Myra with all her closed doors, and here's me with all my open ones, and we're both miserable. - The Women's Room by Marilyn French.
Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to be love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.
from Beloved
Quote from the The Thin Red Line.
What is this great evil? How did it steal into this world? From what seed , what root did it spring? Who's doing this? Who's killing us? Robbing us of love and life. Mocking us with the sight of what we might have known.
James Jones, The Thin Red Line.
- And who are you? said he.
- Don't puzzle me, said I.
Currently reading: Tristram Shandy.
All morons hate it when you call them a moron. ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 6
“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.
Regards
Olympus
____
dossier surendettement
So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.
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To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent action or concession on his behalf. That is a sort of revenge which fills into the scale of virtue ...
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There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life that follows - in the time when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain - in the time when day follows day in dull unexpectant sameness, and trial is a dreary routine - it is then that despair threatens; it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is felt ...
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'It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.'
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All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the men of maxims; because such people early discern that the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy. And the man of maxims is the popular representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination, impartiality ...
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... what quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?
"If personality was an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him."
(Nick describing Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby.")
Oh Bouquin I haven't read Mill on the Floss in a very long time, but I always remember that it was one of my favorite books. Your quotes makes me want to read the book again.Quote:
Originally Posted by bouquin
"That is some outfit you're wearing -- you look like something out of the Arabian Nights. You appear to have an erection, as well."
"Of course I have an erection. I'm in love."
from The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
On a graver note:
"Last line of defence for the honest man.
Free will is what distinguishes us from the animals.
And I have no intention of behaving like a ****ing animal."
-- from Phaedra's Love by Sarah Kane
This description from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment really struck me-
"he was uncommonly jovial, a frank fellow, and kind and soft hearted. But under all was was concealed a depthof worth and merit. The best of his comrades knew this, and all loved him. His appearance arrested attention: he was ill shaven and black haired."
Coming up for Air by George Orwell
"The past is a curious thing. It's with you all the time, I suppose an hour never passes without you thinking of things
that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it's got no reality, it's just a set of facts
that you've learned, like a lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or smell,
especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn't merely come back to you, you're actually in the past."
"The old English order of life couldn't change. For ever and ever decent God-fearing women would cook
Yorkshire pudding and apple dumplings on enormous coal ranges, wear woolen underclothes and sleep on feathers,
make plumb jam in July and pickles in October, and read Hilda's Home Companion in the afternoons,
with the flies buzzing round, in a sort of cosy little underworld of stewed tea, bad legs, and happy endings."
(Mmm. Reminds me of me gran!)
Cider with Rosie: Laurie Lee
They leaned over me – one, two, three – their mouths smeared with red currants and their hands dripping with juice. “There, there, it’s all right, don’t you wail any more. Come down ‘ome and we’ll stuff you with currants.”
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning: Laurie Lee
The stooping figure of my mother, waist – deep in the grass and caught there like a piece of sheep’s wool, was the last I saw of my country home as I left it to discover the world. She stood old and bent at the top of the bank, silently watching me go, one gnarled red hand raised in farewell and blessing, not questioning why I went. At the bend of the road I looked back again and saw the gold light die behind her; then I turned the corner, passed the village school, and closed that part of my life forever.
From Howards End by E.M Forster
Quote:
The Earth as an artistic cult has had its day, and the literature of the near future will probably ignore the country and seek inspiration from the town. One can understand the reaction. Of Pan and the elemental forces, the public has heard a little too much--they seem Victorian, while London is Georgian--and those who care for the earth with sincerity may wait long ere the pendulum swings back to her again. Certainly London fascinates. One visualizes it as a tract of quivering gray, intelligent without purpose, and excitable without love; as a spirit that has altered before it can be chronicled; as a heart that certainly beats, but with no pulsation of humanity. It lies beyond everything: Nature with all her cruelty, comes nearer to us than do these crowds of men. A friend explains himself: the earth is explicable--from her we came and we must return to her.
This quote from Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' struck me as it really reminded me of someone close to me-
"He was uncommonly jovial, a frank fellow, and kind and soft hearted. But under all was concealed a depth of worth and merit. The best of his comrades knew this, and all loved him. His apperance arrested attention: he was ill shaven and black haired."
"Lucy was naturally clever; her remarks were often just and amusing; and as a companion for half an hour Elinor frequently found her agreeable; but her powers had received no aid from education, she was ignorant and illiterate, and her deficiency of all mental improvement, her want of information in the most common particulars, could not be concealed from Miss Dashwood, in spite of her constant endeavour to appear to advantage. Elinor saw, and pitied her for, the neglect of abilities which education might have rendered so respectable; but she saw, with less tenderness of feeling, the thorough want of delicacy, of rectitude, and integrity of mind, which her attentions, her assiduities, her flatteries at the Park betrayed; and she could have no lasting satisfaction in the company of a person who joined insincerity with ignorance; whose want of instruction prevented their meeting in conversation on terms of equality, and whose conduct towards others, made every shew of attention and deference towards herself perfectly valueless."
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
I really liked the quote:
"For you, a thousand times over!"
by the character of Hassan in The Kite Runner. For me, that one quote of 6 words had more of an emotional impact than almost any other part of the novel. It made me idolize Hassan as a friend of noble character (and later a quasi-martyr of sorts) and it made me hate Amir for his lack of respect to his friend/brother that would do anything for him.
You can have your cake and eat it; the only trouble is, you get fat.
--------------------------------------------------------The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonourably, foolishly, viciously.
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The despairing are always being urged to abstain from selfishness, to think of others first. This seems unfair. Why load them with responsibility for the welfare of others, when their own already weighs them down?
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When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret. When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which the young applaud the most insignificant improvements - the invention of some new valve or sprocket - while remaining heedless of the world's barbarism. I don't say things have got worse; I merely say the young wouldn't notice if they had. The old times were good because then we were young, and ignorant of how ignorant the young can be.
From Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. I chose to leave the first part out, for the sake of keeping my comments mostly kid-friendly. :DQuote:
The big problem is, he's a mate n aw. Whit kin ye dae?
"There is some excitement amidships. The Russians have thrown back a tarp to reveal the chimps, who are covered with vomit, and have also broken into the vodka. Haftung blinks and shudders. Wolfgang is on his back, sucking at a gurgling bottle he is clutching with his feet. Some of the chimps are docile, others are looking for a fight."
-Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
"These were the questions that immediately tormented his inexperienced and virgin heart, that this most righteous of righteous men should be given over to such derisive and spiteful jeering from a crowd so frivolous and so far beneath him." - The Brothers Karamazov; "An Opportune Moment"
This deterioration in public behaviour had been caused by a naive belief in the post-war political consensus that, because what had happened in Germany was wrong, the right way to govern a country was to renounce punitive sentencing and rely on the theory of rehabilitation to uphold the rule of law. The significance of this miscalculation was not lost on either the criminal fraternity or the legal profession, for the obvious consequence of such a policy was that criminality would flourish to the benefit of both.
From Pro Bono Publico by Emil Miller
From "East of Edan" for Steinbeck.Quote:
Adam, the most honest man it was possible to find, living all his life on stolen money. Now Aron his son, who tried to be so pure, living all his life on the profits of a whorehouse.
I cannot say enough how much I love Camus. Reading some of the things he says, is like listening to my own thoughts.
From The Fall
Quote:
This is true that we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don't want to improve ourselves, or be bettered, for we should first have to be judged by default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue. We lack the energy of evil as well as the energy of good. Do you know Dante? Really? The devil you say! Then you know that Dante accepts the idea of neutral angels in the quarrel between God and Satan. And he puts them in Limbo, a sort of vestibule of his Hell. We are in the vestibule, che ami.
Crome Yellow, Aldous HuxleyQuote:
Formulated by their art the most insipid statements become
enormously significant. For example, I proffer the constatation,
'Black ladders lack bladders.' A self-evident truth, one on
which it would not have been worth while to insist, had I chosen
to formulate it in such words as 'Black fire-escapes have no
bladders,' or, 'Les echelles noires manquent de vessie.' But
since I put it as I do, 'Black ladders lack bladders,' it
becomes, for all its self-evidence, significant, unforgettable,
moving. The creation by word-power of something out of nothing--
what is that but magic?
This book is charming.