Quotes from Books

"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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

Here is a thread to share the sections you like in the book you are reading at the moment.

I have been reading The Name of the Rose, which I find a little hard because it is full of religious references (Christianity), some of which I don't understand (practical) and some of which I don't care about (historical). However, it is a good book to make one consider and reconsider blind obedience to religion -or any teaching for that matter.

Here are some quotes I really like:

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Not so much a quote, but a small excerpt I love from Alasdair Gray's "Lanark":



"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