Quotes from Books

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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If a shepherd errs, he must be isolated from other shepherds, but woe unto us if the sheep begin to distrust shepherds.

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For what I saw at the abbey then (and will now recount) caused me to think that often inquisitors create heretics. And not only in the sense that they imagine heretics where these do not exist, but also that inquisitors repress the heretical putrefaction so vehemently that many are driven to share in it, in their hatred for the judges. Truly, a circle conceived by the Devil. God preserve us.

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This is a very nice idea for a thread, thanx for opening! :nod:
I'd like to share my favourite passages from Paradise Lost by John Milton.

Godfather about man's fall from paradise:

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whose fault?
Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of me
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.

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(III, l.96-100)

Raphael to Adam:

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that thou art happy, owe to God;
That thou continuest such, owe to thyself

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(V, l.520f)

A Walk To Remember

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I breathe deeply, taking in the fresh spring air. Though Beaufort has changed and I have changed, the air itself has not. It’s still the air of my childhood, the air of my seventeenth year, and when I finally exhale, I’m fifty-seven once more. But this is okay. I smile slightly, looking toward the sky, knowing there’s one thing I still haven’t told you: I now believe, by the way, that miracles can happen.

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EDIT: I am reading nothing now a days but this is the book I have read recently so I hope that you did not mind me quoting it.

"Mercedes was silent. In her fourty years, she knew two things with certainty: From the minute we are born there is danger. In the end, it is up to the women to shield and protect." p.7 Bitter Grounds by Sandra Benitez

"Darwin settled in the country, fathered ten children, corresponded wtih Lyell and a hundred other scientists and wrote books--among them a journal of the voyage of the Beagle, a treatise on volcanos and another on the geology of South America, and a masterful study of barnacles that consumed seven years of work and left him fuming that 'I hate a barnacle as no man ever did before.' "

--Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la via diritta era smarrita.

In the middle of our life's walk
I found myself in a dark wood
for the straight road was lost]


I am overwhelmed by Dante, his brain must have been continually smoking.

Another quote from The Name of the Rose:

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What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man or Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss.

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From Hamlet

Ghost:
I am thy father's spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

" Would you like to be grown up?"

"Yes, I would... But I don't really want to grow up. Old people can be so disagreeable... I'd rather stay the way I am, and sometimes I'd like to be able to fly... Then I'd laugh at everybody."

Rosshalde - Hermann Hesse

" I sing of arms and of the man"
Daved West's Translation of Virgil's Aeneid

What a wonderful sentence!

For Mother's Day on Sunday. From Joyce's Portrait of the Artist:

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That was not a nice expression. His mother had told him not to speak with the rough boys in the college. Nice mother! The first day in the hall of the castle when she had said goodbye she had put up her veil double to her nose to kiss him: and her nose and eyes were red. But he had pretended not to see that she was going to cry. She was a nice mother but she was not so nice when she cried. And his father had given him two five-shilling pieces for pocket money. And his father had told him if he wanted anything to write home to him and, whatever he did, never to peach on a fellow. Then at the door of the castle the rector had shaken hands with his father and mother, his soutane fluttering in the breeze, and the car had driven off with his father and mother on it. They had cried to him from the car, waving their hands:
-- Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!

-- Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!

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“What’s the point of knowing good if you don’t keep trying to become a good person?"

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- The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard

The Ghost Road

'Too fussy to live, Prior thought. There you are, nowhere near France and an epitaph already.'

' "Sleeping all right?"
"Not last night. Bloody tent leaks."
"Generally?"
"I sleep alright"
Mather sat back in his chair. "How did you get in?"
"Throught he flap."
Mather's forefinger shot up. "Watch it, laddie. How did you get into the army?"'

Right now poems of a prominent Bulgarian poet along with Some works of W.Blake...I will try to translate some lines of him/I do not mean Blake/:
.....
The struggle is mercilessly cruel
The struggle,as they say, is epich
I have fallen. Someone else will replace me ...
and that is it
What does here a single person mean?
....
A shooting,and after it-worms
This is so simple and logical.
But in the storm we will be together again with you-
my people
because we loved you
2 o'clock 23.07.1942
.....
He wrote it in his cell three hours before being shot

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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"The main problem is Pontius Pilate. But the underwear doesn't help."

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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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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

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

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Can we post quotes about books that we read already?

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Lennie said, "Tell about that place, George."
"I jus' tol' you, jus' las' night."
"Go on - tell again, George."
"Well, it's ten acres," said George. "Got a little win'mill. Got a little shack on it, an' a chicken run. Got a kitchen orchard, cherries, apples, peaches, 'cots, nuts, got a few berries. They's a place for alfalfa and plenty water to flood it. They's a pig pen-"
"An' rabbits, George."
"No place for rabbits now, but I could easily build a few hutches and you could feed alfalfa to the rabbits."
"Damn right, I could," said Lennie. "You God damn right I could."
George's hands stopped working with the cards. His voice was growing warmer. "An' we could have a few pigs. I could build a smoke house like the one gran'pa had, an' when we kill a pig we can smoke the bacon and the hams, and make sausage an' all like that. An' when the salmon run up river we could catch a hundred of 'em an' salt 'em down or smoke 'em. We could save them for breakfast. They ain't nothing so nice as smoked salmon. When the fruit come in we could can it - and tomatoes, they're easy to can. Ever' Sunday we'd kill a chicken or a rabbit. Maybe we'd have a cow or a goat, and the cream is so God damn thick you got to cut it with a knife and take it out with a spoon."
Lennie watched him with wide eyes, and old Candy watched him too. Lennie said softly, "We could live offa the fatta the lan'."

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- John Steinbeck, "Of Mice and Men"

The Green Mile:

"Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day."

"When I die and stand before God awaiting judgement and he asks me why I let one of his miracles die, what am I going to say? It was my job?"

"But Jesus, when you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health, you worry about getting rupture or something. If everything is simply jake then you're frightened of death."

J.P. Donleavy
The Ginger Man

I enjoyed Tom's school days with Mr. Stelling a great deal...

"Tom Tulliver, being abundant in no form of speech, did not use any metaphor to declare his views as to the nature of Latin; he never called it an instrument of torture; and it was not until he had got on some way in the next half-year, and in the Delectus, that he was advanced enough to call it a "bore" and "beastly stuff." At present, in relation to this demand that he should learn Latin declensions and conjugations, Tom was in a state of as blank unimaginativeness concerning the cause and tendency of his sufferings, as if he had been an innocent shrewmouse imprisoned in the split trunk of an ash-tree in order to cure lameness in cattle."

George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss

"I figgered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus road. I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybbe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit - the human sperit - the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent - I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it." - Preacher Casy
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

You're reading Grapes of Wrath too? I'm reading that for english right now.

So how are you finding it? I have to admit, I am not a fan of Steinbeck at ALL, but a friend of mine wanted to know what I thought of the ending, so I am reading to oblige. I am about halfway through now, and it's not as bad as I feared it would be - body count is only up to 2 people, a dog and a jackrabbit! =-) Casy is actually my favorite character so far - I like his train of thought.

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5

"The American was astonised. He stood up shakily, spitting blood. He'd had two teeth knocked out. He had meant no harm by what he'd said, evidently, had no idea that the guard would hear and understand.
'Why me?' he asked the guard.
The guard shoved him back into the ranks. 'Vy you? Vy anybody?' he said."

Laurell K. Hamilton's Incubus Dreams:

"At 3:00 that afternoon, I was at work, right on time. Neither sex, vampires, shapeshifters, nor metaphysical meltdowns will deter this animator from her appointed rounds. At least not today."