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i know full well the earthly view of man
The yonder view is blocked to mortal ken.
The fool who squints beyond with blinking eye,
Imagining his like above the sky.
Let him stand firm and gaze about alert.
To able man the world is not inert.
What need for him to seek eternities.
What he may seek, that he may seize.
When spirits haunt, let him not change his pace.
Find bliss and torment in the onward stride.
Aye, every moment stay unsatisfied.
--Goethe, Faust Part II, Act V
"'Man makes plans . . . And God laughs.'"
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"Because you and I, we know, . . . that the story is whatever we decide it is, and however nice and neat we make it, in the end a story is never going to make a damn bit of difference to the dead."
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I would rather fight to take a prize however doubtful than wait to see what scraps I may be fed
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"'Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.' Right? I mean, those are Jesus, words. The man could be fairly harsh when he needed to be. . . He was kick-***."
"But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid."
- Satan
To drink is nothing, what's important is to get drunk
- For Whom The Bells Toll
We are not to judge of the feelings of others by what we might feel in their place. However dark the habitation of the mole to our eyes, yet the animal itself finds the apartment sufficiently lightsome.
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'I never learned Greek, and I don't find that I've ever missed it. I have had a Doctor's cap and gown without Greek; I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek; I eat heartily without Greek; and, in short, as I don't know Greek, I do not believe there is any good in it.'
It is a good thing to know what it is to be poor, and a better thing if you can do it in company.
The Hare with Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal
How objects are handed on is all about story-telling. I am giving you this because I love you. Or because it was given to me. Because I bought it somewhere special. Because you will care for it. Because it will complicate your life. Because it will make someone else envious. There is no easy story in legacy. What is remembered and what is forgotten? There can be a chain of forgetting, the rubbing away of precious ownership as much as the slow accretion of stories. What is being passed on to me with all these small Japanese objects ?
“I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
"Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms and little wildflowers." - Roberto Bolaño, 2666.
The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others
indication of insanity they do not notice in themselves.
The Devil - Leo Tolstoy
It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'.
My mother is a fish.
To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction -- every kind of evidence in the logician's list -- have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation.
~Far From the Madding Crowd -Thomas Hardy
Water was a state of mind. If you think it your friend when you swim in the river or wash away the dirt, why call it your enemy when it comes from the heavens? From the cup of the gods themselves.
The Russian Concubine ~ Kate Furnivall
"O, reason not the need [deed]! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life's as cheap as beast's. Thou art a lady;
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need --
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man [fellow],
As full of grief as age, wretched in both!
If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely [lamely]. Touch me with noble anger,
And let not women's weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man's cheeks! No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall -- I will do such things --
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth! You think I'll weep
No, I'll not weep:
I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!"
From Shakespeare's King Lear
In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer - Albert Camus.
"The life with you was lovely – and when I say lovely, I mean doves and lilies, and velvet, and that soft pink “v” in the middle and the way your tongue curved up to the long, lingering “l”. Our life together was alliterative, and when I think of all the little things which will die now that we cannot share them, I feel as if we were dead too. And perhaps we are. You see, the greater our happiness was, the hazier its edges grew, as if its outlines were melting, and now it has disolved altogether. I have not stopped loving you; but something is dead in me, and I cannot see you in the mist…" - Vladimir Nabokov
"Better to have no sense than misuse it as you do, Emma." Mr. Knightley
"I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to "Yes," she ought to say "No" directly." Emma
From "Emma" by Jane Austen
Not so much a quote, but a small excerpt I love from Alasdair Gray's "Lanark":Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
"I took Judy to a party. I got rather drunk and started kissing the host's daughter on the floor behind the sofa. She was drunk too. Then Judy found us and was furious. The trouble is I was enjoying myself so much I couldn't even pretend to be sorry."
He frowned, and said, "That was bad, wasn't it?"
"If Judy loves you, yes, of course it was bad."
McAlpin looked gravely at Thaw for a moment, then flung his head back and roared with laughter.
There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams - not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion.
The Great Gatsby
Though the sun by clouds be covered,
In the soul a light can rise;
In our hearts can be discovered
What the sullen world denies.
--Chorus – ‘Faust’ – von Goethe
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
--Nabokov – Lolita
Your king is in check,' said Woland.
Very well, very well,' responded the cat, and he began studying the chessboard through his opera glasses.
--Bulgakov – The Master and Margarita
Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
War and Peace
"I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingured about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!
Frederick Douglass; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave
“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”
~ Yeats
“If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creatures could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet?”
- McCarthy (Blood Meridian)
"Spring, love, happiness!" this oak seemed to say. "Are you not weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the same and always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness! Look at those cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too, sticking out my broken and barked fingers just where they have grown, whether from my back or my sides: as they have grown so I stand, and I do not believe in your hopes and your lies."
As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times to look at that oak, as if expecting something from it. Under the oak, too, were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling, rigid, misshapen, and grim as ever.
"Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right," thought Prince Andrew.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
"Our house stood within a few rods of Chesapeake Bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition."
Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and American Slave
That ancient truth, we will recite it. Give way to force, for might is right.
And who would boldly offer strife, than risk your house, estate and life.
--Chorus Faust Part 2 Act V Goethe as translated by Walter Arndt.
Time Regained, Proust
"If at least, time enough were alloted to me to accomplish my work, I would not fail to mark it with the seal of Time, the idea of which imposed itself upon me with so much force to-day, and I would therein describe men, if need be, as monsters occupying a place in Time infinitely more important than the restricted one reserved for them in space, a place, on the, contrary, prolonged immeasurably since, simultaneously touching widely separated years and the distant periods they have lived through — between which so many days have ranged themselves — they stand like giants immersed in Time."
Villette, Bronte
"Always there are excellent reasons for these lapses, if the hermit but knew them. Though he is stagnant in his cell, his connections without are whirling in the very vortex of life. That void interval which passes for him so slowly that the very clocks seem at a stand, and the wingless hours plod by in the likeness of tired tramps prone to rest at milestones — that same interval, perhaps, teems with events, and pants with hurry for his friends.The hermit — if he be a sensible hermit — will swallow his own thoughts, and lock up his own emotions during these weeks of inward winter. He will know that Destiny designed him to imitate, on occasion, the dormouse, and he will be conformable: make a tidy ball of himself, creep into a hole of life’s wall, and submit decently to the drift which blows in and soon blocks him up, preserving him in ice for the season.Let him say, “It is quite right: it ought to be so, since so it is.” And, perhaps, one day his snow-sepulchre will open, spring’s softness will return, the sun and south-wind will reach him; the budding of hedges, and carolling of birds, and singing of liberated streams, will call him to kindly resurrection.*Perhaps*this may be the case, perhaps not: the frost may get into his heart and never thaw more; when spring comes, a crow or a pie may pick out of the wall only his dormouse-bones. Well, even in that case, all will be right: it is to be supposed he knew from the first he was mortal, and must one day go the way of all flesh, “As well soon as syne.”
“All great and precious things are lonely.”*―*John Steinbeck,*East of Eden
Young men read books before attending Helene's evenings, to have something to say in her salon, and secretaries of the embassy, and even ambassadors, confided diplomatic secrets to her, so that in a way Helene was a power. Pierre, who knew she was very stupid, sometimes attended, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her evenings and dinner parties, where politics, poetry, and philosophy were discussed. At these parties his feelings were like those of a conjuror who always expects his trick to be found out at any moment. But whether because stupidity was just what was needed to run such a salon.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Never forget who you are, for surely the world will not.Make it your strength.Then it can never be your weakness.Armor yourself in it,and it will never be used to hurt you
~~Tyrion Lannister - A game of thrones by George R.R. Martin
Least common denominator
http://www.herfree.com/avatar2.jpg
According to Fleetfin's research, if you sun-dry the sexual organs of a male and female squid and bring them into contact at the rate of three hundred fifty feet per fifteen seconds or less (the average running speed of a third-year junior high school student), you'll create an explosion surpassing dynamite.
Kobo Abe, Kangaroo Notebook (1991)
Rostov was always thinking about that brilliant exploit of his, which to his amazement had gained him the St. George's Cross and even given him a reputation for bravery, and there was something he could not at all understand. "So others are even more afraid than I am!" he thought. "So that's all there is in what is called heroism! And heroism! And did I do it for my country's sake? And how was he to blame, with his dimple and blue eyes? And how frightened he was! He thought that I should kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand trembled. And they have given me a St. George's Cross.... I can't make it out at all."
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
"A strange metaphysical question arises: Whether, when the object of an impassioned love has herself faded into a shadow, the fiery passion itself canstill survive as an abstraction, still mourn over its wrongs, still clamour for redress."
"Even now thy conscience speaks against it in sullen whispers: but at the other end of thy long life-gallery that same conscience will speak to thee in volleying thunders" - personal favorite
"Despite my Dutch education, a blue hill to me is as a friend, and a roaring torrent like the sound of a domestic song that hath soothed my infancy. I never felt the impulse so strongly as in this land of lakes and mountains, and nothing grieves me so much as that duty prevents your being with me in my numerous excursions among its recesses."
From Scott's Guy Mannering
On the Sunday afternoon she stood at her bedroom window, looking across at the oak-trees of the wood, in whose branches a twilight was tangled, below the bright sky of the afternoon. Grey-green rosettes of honeysuckle leaves hung before the window, some already, she fancied, showing bud. It was spring, which she loved and dreaded.
Sons and Lovers - D. H. Lawrence
"Zakhar Fyodorovich was used to doing business in the crazy city of Rostov-but not that sort of business. His usual reason for going there was machinery: all the latest machines turned up Rostov. You could take a good look at them, run a hand across them, and someone would explain how they worked in a way you could understand."
Alexander Solzhenitsyn August 1914
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I meant to add this one as well from The Travels of Marco Polo:
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http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/a...oPoloquote.jpg
"But as de old folks always say, Ah'm born but Ah ain't dead. No tellin' what Ah'm liable tuh do yet."
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It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.
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"If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all."
Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
This one is interesting. Ulau shutting himself in the tower amongst his wealth.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gilliatt Gurgle
Why on earth would he do such a thing?