Quotes from Books

[HailStorm]

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Pg 28 February 1808, the Stones of York

A great old church in the depths of winter is a discouraging place at the best of times; the cold of a hundred winters seems to have been preserved in its stones and to seep out of them.

[lilydantes]

The invention of printing is the greatest event of history. It is the Revolution's Mother. It is humanity's mode of expressing, totally renewed, it is man's thought shedding one form and arraying itself in another, the complete, definite casting off of the skin of that symbolic serpent which, since Adam, has stood for intelligence.

Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, p. 168 (Modern Library)

Though I really loved this entire chapter ("This Will Kill That").

[white camellia]

There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition - for why should I not so term it? - served mainly to accelerate the increase itself.

Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher
Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

[yewon]

i've just read some of the quotes and they were really interesting!
these days i'm reading "pride an prejudice" by jane austin for 4th time.
here are some quotes i really like i this book:

(the very first sentence of this book)"It is a truth niversally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortun must be in want of a wife"

"pride realtes more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity to what we would have others think of us."

"she was convinced that she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet"

"you must learn some of my philosophy. think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure"

"i am the happiest creature in the world. perhaps othe people have said so before, but no one in such justice."

[Dark Muse]

It was acutally a while back ago sense I read 1984 but this secne just stayed with me, and I thought it was really powerful and wonderful.

Tierelessely the woman marched to and fro, corking and uncorking herself, signing and fallen silent, and pegging out more diapers, and more, and yet more. He wondered whether she took in washing for a living, or was merely a slave to twenty or thirty grandchildern. Julia had come acorss to his side; together they gazed down with a sort of fascination at the strudy figure below. As he looked at the woman in her characterstic attitude, her thick arms reaching up for the line, her powerful marelike buttocks protruded, it struck him for the first time that she was beautiful. It had never before occured to him that the body of a woman of fifity, blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing, then hardend, roughened by work till it was coarse in the grain like an overripe turnip, could be beautiful. But it was so, and after all, he thought, why not? The solid contourless body, like a block of granite and the rasping red skin, bore the same relation to the body of a girl as the rose-hip to the rose. Why should the fruit be held inferior to the flower?

"She is beautiful" he murmured

"She is a meter acorss the hips eaisly" said Julia

'That is her style of beauty" said Winston

[Pensive]

Stand upshot upon it, for the ground is holy, being even as it came from Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.

- Cry The Beloved Country

[mayneverhave]

...standing still on the spot, before that steeple, for
hours on end, motionless, trying to remember, feeling deep within myself a
tract of soil reclaimed from the waters of Lethe slowly drying until the
buildings rise on it again; and then no doubt, and then more uneasily than
when, just now, I asked him for a direction, I will seek my way again, I
will turn a corner... but... the goal is in my heart...


- Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time) - Marcel Proust

[Reepicheep]

"I'll sit my four-hundred-pound *** on you and that is not how you want to die."

Odd Thomas--Dean Koonz

[Dori]

"At that point, probably to satisfy himself that I was not a little girl, he glanced at me and blushed up to his ears. I did not understand. I stood before him staring in amazement. He got up, came towards me with an embarrassed air, was horribly confused, said something, seemed to be be apologising for something, perhaps for having only just noticed that I was such a big girl. At last I understood. I don't remember what happened to me then; I was overcome with confusion, lost my head, blushed even more crimson than Pokrovsky, hid my face in my hands and ran out of the room."

This is great example of Dostoevsky's budding talent (which is, of course, a passage from Poor Folk).

[rmd]

"Few people of attainments take easily to a plan of self improvement. Some discover very early their perfection cannot endure the insult. Others find their intellectual pleasure lies in the theory, not the practice. Only a few stubborn ones will blunder on, painfully, out of the luxuriant world of their pretentions into the desert of mortification and reward."

From Voss by Patrick White.

[Viola Kent]

The Name of the Rose is a wonderful book but you must have patience to read it. i took to do it.

I'm reading Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy. If someone thinks I should stop reading, I'd apreciate the hands up.

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it" George Bernard Shaw

[thescholar]

I'm reading the Templar Legacy by Raymond Khoury. yeah, pop novels... im ashamed. anyways:
It has served us well, this myth of Christ.
-Pope Constantine (undisclosed number) :P

[Dori]

"I realized that besides the loss of freedom, besides the forced labor, there is another torture in prison life, almost more terrible than any other---that is, compulsary life in common. Life in common is to be found of course in other places, but there are men in prison whom not everyone would care to associate with and I am certain that every convict felt this torture, though of course in most cases unconsciously." (from The House of the Dead, pages 26--27)

"Swearing, 'wagging your tongue' is allowed. It is to some extent entertainment for all...And indeed the combatants swear at one another rather for entertainment, for the exercise of their linguistic powers...I could not imagine at first how they could abuse one another for pleasure, find in it amusement, pleasant exercise, enjoyment. But one must not forget their vanity. A connoisseur in abuse was respected. He was almost applauded like an actor." (from The House of the Dead, page 31)

I'll be back with more.

[Janine]

The Name of the Rose is a wonderful book but you must have patience to read it. i took to do it.

I'm reading Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy. If someone thinks I should stop reading, I'd apreciate the hands up.

Viola Kent, Hi and welcome to Lit Net; I see you are new, from your number of posts. I read "Under the Greenwood Tree", since I have read nearly all of Hardy's novels - one of my goals. I enjoyed it, but it might not be for everyone. It is a very pastoral example of Hardy's work; involves country musician's, correct? They travel from tavern to tavern performing; am I correct in remembering the book; doesn't it take place around Christmas? I think it is one of Hary's lighter novels, and is quite amusing, as well; it is not one of his major works.
Have you read any other's of his? I do recall it being one of the last books of Hardy's, I have read. I think I only have one or two more to read to complete my novel reading of Hardy. I have heard that "The Trumpet Major" is another less noted work, but a very good novel; a friend highly recommended it to me, awhile back. I am never inclined to give up on a book, so I would keep reading; I don't think "UTGT" is that long a book, is it? If you have not read Hardy's most noted novels, you must. They are all good reads. My favorites were "Tess of the D'Urbervilles", "Mayor of Casterbridge", "The Woodlanders", "Jude the Obscure", and "Return of the Native".

[Dark Muse]

The Viking, by Edison Marshall, pg 193

It was to meet my fate, as a warrior must, that I fought to stay alive. All day we were a merry band, and the thought came to me that every mother's son of us might be Fey. I'd never seen the sky so blue, and the sea so beautiful.