Quotes from Books

[genoveva]

From Opal Whiteley's diary:

"By the wood-shed is a brook. It goes singing on. Its joysong does sing in my heart... Between the ranch house and the house we live in is the singing creek where the willows grow. We have conversations. And there I do dabble my toes beside the willows. I feel the feels of gladness they do feel."

[Woland]

The Merchant of Venice


PORTIA
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

[grace86]

that's a great quote grace, wow, it doesn't get any better than that---it reminds me how much dostoyevsky was as much a poet as he was a prose writer. thanks!

Glad you liked it.

[euterpe]

"Without lust we cannot fly."
_Sappho's Leap_ by Erica Jong

[Yelena]

"Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush cracking wrack and shells. You are walking though it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short spaceof time though very short times of space..." - I love how J. Joyce played with words.

[Scheherazade]

Summer of 1918--Never was life in the line more bitter and more full of horror than in the hours of the bombardment, when he blanched faces lie in the dirt, and the hands clutch at the one thought: No! No! Not now! Not now at the last moment!

Summer of 1918--Breath of hope that sweeps over the scorched fields, raging fever of impatience, of disappointment, of the most agonizing terror of death, insensate question: Why? Why do they not make an end? And why do these rumours of an end fly about?

from All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque

[Logos]

last time
.......Last time you see someone and you don't know it will be the last time. And all that you know now, if you'd known then. But you didn't know, and now it's too late.

rupture
.......Something ruptured and began bleeding in my chest when I bent over my mother, when I saw my mother in that way. It will happen to you, in a way special to you. You will not anticipate it, you cannot prepare for it, and you cannot escape it. The bleeding will not cease for a long time.
-Joyce Carol Oates, Missing Mom
.
.

[dramasnot6]

Post any quote from the book you are currently reading! Also, say why you like it in terms of your personal appreciation and it's context in the book.
I'll start.
"The really great men must have great sadness on earth"-Raskolnikov
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
This quote is said by the protagonist, who is remorseful from murdering a person without getting caught, in a debate about criminals with the fiance of his sister whom he does not like. I like it because it is not only powerful from that particular character, but poses the question "Do the means justify the end?" It also makes us question the actions of so many leaders we consider great, could one truly improve society through otherwise criminal actions? Even if most consider particular killing for the best, would that exonerate someone from their guilty conscience?

[missjane]

I read a Chinese version, so I translate it into English. Hope that you can understant what i mean.
"We can walk to the Heaven, but we can never get to it. 'Walk to' means there is somewhere we can go, while 'get to' give us an aimless world.'
I cannot reinterpretate it with beautiful words and correct meaning. i can use a metaphor to make it clear. when one is standing in the bank of a river, and the other side of the river is an ideal aim. so you can sail to it. but once you get it . there would be no "other side". So hard to explain it.

[Gallantry]

from "The Varieties of Religious Experiences" by William James.

"Inner happiness and serviceability do not always agree. What immediately feels most 'good' is not always most 'true', when measured by the verdict of the rest of experience. The difference between Philip drunk and Philip sober is the classic instance in corroboration. If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience."

[Riddleman]

(sorry, misspelled the title

"The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place"
(Kavalier & Clay, p. 339)

Kavalier and Clay is a very poetic book about war, love and comic books. Sometimes I even think that the poetry is a bit over the top, I prefer it when it's about the two lead characters. Anyway, this quote does reflect the sens of doom that you feel throughout the book. It's light and funny, but you just know something's gonna go horribly, horribly wrong.....

[bouquin]

from The Birthmark, a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne:

"... our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us, indeed, to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make."

[Laindessiel]

From Crime and Punishment - I just loved this part:

"Do you like street music?" said Raskolnikov, addressing a middle-aged man standing idly by him. The man looked at him, startled and wondering.

"I love to hear singing to a street organ," said Raskolnikov, and his manner seemed strangely out of keeping with the subject--"I like it on cold, dark, damp autumn evenings--they must be damp--when all the passers-by have pale green, sickly faces, or better still when wet snow is falling straight down, when there's no wind--you know what I mean?--and the street lamps shine right through it...."

"I don't know...Excuse me..." muttered the stranger, frightened by the question and Raskolnikov's strange manner, and he crossed over to the other side of the street.

That part just to me sums up Raskolnikov at this point of the novel, and it is morbidly funny as well.

Hehe, very nice, Grace.. I'd like to quote from the same book, which I'm curretly in the midway of...

Facts are not everything; it is important to know how to interpret them. - Zosimoff

Crime is a protest against a badly-organized social state of things.- Razoumikhin

Moral license of authority to kill is even more terrible than official legal authority to the same effect. - Porphyrius Petrovitch

Suffering is part and parcel of extrensive intelligence and a fleeting heart. - Raskolnikoff

Reason is the only slave of passion, and I have only injured myself. - Arcadius Svidrigailov

[andave_ya]

"Here lies an anachronism in the vague expectation of eternity."
Lord Peter Wimsey's epitaph he wrote for himself in The Wimsey family

Rather morbid, perhaps, but one that has stayed in my memory.

[bouquin]

from The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith:

If everybody had a nice, uninterfering mother-in-law, such as I have, what a deal of happiness there would be in the world.