Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, cry 'Caesar!".
Speak; Caesar is turn'd to hear.
Soothsayer: Beware the Ides of March.
Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" Act I, Scene II
Printable View
Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, cry 'Caesar!".
Speak; Caesar is turn'd to hear.
Soothsayer: Beware the Ides of March.
Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" Act I, Scene II
From "The Mill on the Floss" by George Eliot
Quote:
"I think all women are crosser than men," said Maggie. "Aunt Glegg's a
great deal crosser than uncle Glegg, and mother scolds me more than
father does."
"Well, _you'll_ be a woman some day," said Tom, "so _you_ needn't
talk."
"But I shall be a _clever_ woman," said Maggie, with a toss.
Quote:
"Character," says Novalis, in one of his questionable
aphorisms,--"character is destiny." But not the whole of our destiny.
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was speculative and irresolute, and we have
a great tragedy in consequence. But if his father had lived to a good
old age, and his uncle had died an early death, we can conceive
Hamlet's having married Ophelia, and got through life with a
reputation of sanity, notwithstanding many soliloquies, and some moody
sarcasms toward the fair daughter of Polonius, to say nothing of the
frankest incivility to his father-in-law.
Anthem, Any Rand:
"It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing of my ears gives its song to the world. It is my mind which thinks, and the judgment of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth. It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect."
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
"How absurd those words are, such as beast, and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men."
"Well look at an animal, a cat, a dog, or a bird, or one of those beautiful great beasts in the zoo, a puma, or a giraffe. You can't help seeing all of them are right. They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky."
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
These horrors were really nonexistent. A man of the Middle Ages would detest the whole mode of our present-day life as something far more than horrible, fare more than barbarous. Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties, and ugliness; accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures, and religions overlap. A man of the Classical age who had to live in medieval times would suffocate miserably just as a savage does in the midst of our civilization.
The Unnamable - Samuel Beckett
First lines:
Where now? Who now? When now? Unquestioning. I, say I. Unbelieving. Questions, hypotheses, call them that. Keep going, going on, call that going, call that on.
- who had pity for you, when you were sad among the strangers
James Joyce
"Oh, it's miserable to be human. You get such queer diseases. Just because you're human and for no other reason. Before you know it, as the years go by, you're just like other people you have seen, with all those peculiar human ailments. Just another vehicle for temper and vanity and rashness and all the rest. Who wants it? Who needs it?"
--------------------------------------------------------
The world may be strange to a child, but he does not fear it the way a man fears. He marvels at it. But the grown man mainly dreads it. And why? Because of death. So he arranges to have himself abducted like a child. So what happens will not be his fault. And who is this kidnaper - this gipsy? It is the strangeness of life - a thing that makes death more remote, as in childhood.
--------------------------------------------------------
I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.
--------------------------------------------------------
"Fear is a ruler of mankind. It has the biggest dominion of all. It makes you white as candles. It splits each eye in half. More of fear than of any other thing has been created ... As a molding force it comes second only to Nature itself...
It applies to everyone. Though nothing may be visible, still it is heard, like radio. It is on almost all the frequencies. And all tremble, and all are wincing, in greater or lesser degree."
--------------------------------------------------------
"We are funny creatures. We don't see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects but endless fire."
--------------------------------------------------------
"Oh, you can't get away from rhythm ... You just can't get away from it. The left hand shakes with the right hand, the inhale follows the exhale, the systole talks back to the diastole, the hands play patty-cake, and the feet dance with each other. And the seasons. And the stars, and all of that. And the tides, and all that junk. You've got to live at peace with it, because if it's going to worry you, you'll lose. You can't win against it. It keeps on and on and on... we'll never get away from rhythm..."
"The first and the best victory is to conquer self." - Plato, The Republic
Hi,
New here; first post. I offer a few quotes from The Sound and the Fury, which I'm about halfway through right now:
"The day like a pane of glass struck a light, sharp blow."
"On the instant when we come to realize that tragedy is second-hand."
"Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life."
"The watch ticked on."
(only meaningful in context of novel, but so forceful and symbolic)
"The English take and do nothing"
The above quotation is taken from "A passage to India" by E. M Forster.
It's a narration of the author about how English ruled in India in the eighteenth century.
"What must remain striking to a teacher of languages is the Russians extraordinary love of words. They gather them up; they charish them, but they don't hoard them in their breasts; on the contrary they are always ready to pour them out by the hour or by the night with enthusiam, a sweeping abundance with such an aptness of application sometimes that, as in the case of very accomplished parrots, one can't defend oneself from the suspicion that they really understand what they say."
---Joseph Conrad; "Under Western Eyes"
Famous quotes compilation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tkhoEzwt4Y
"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 nordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must needs pity the Opera Ghost."
~Gaston Leroux, "Le Fantome De L'Opera"
*sighs* my poor, poor Erik... Yes, we must needs pity him. :)
The Portrait of Dorian Gray ~ Oscar Wilde
Quote:
Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion.