Quotes from Books

[prendrelemick]

Between books at the moment, so as always I like to browse through my dog-eared copy of Homer's Iliad.


Paris had also been quick and had not lingered in his lofty house. Directly he had put on his splendid armour with its trappings of bronze, he hurried off through the town at full speed, like a stallion who breaks his halter at the manger where they keep and fatten him, and gallops off across the fields in triumph to his usual bathing-place in the delightful river. He tosses up his head; his mane flies back along his shoulders; he knows how beautiful he is; and away he goes, skimming the ground with his feet, to the haunts and pastures of the mares. So Paris, priam's son, came down hot foot from the citadel of Pergamus, resplendent in his armour like the dazzleing sun, and laughing as he came.

The Iliad: (trans E V Rieu)

[bouquin]

If what a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else. Once the life begins to seem secure, one feels the freedom to complain.

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She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone.

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"Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it... It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see."

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"It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying."

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"Most of the time we're loved for what we can do rather than for who we are. It's not such a bad thing, being loved for what you can do... But the other is better... If someone loves you for what you can do then it's flattering, but why do you love them? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them."

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"It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how."

[Sk8ynat]

Anne of Green Gables - L.M.Montgomery

Pretty? Oh pretty doesn't seems the right word to use. Nor beautiful either. They don't go far enough. Oh, it was wonderful- wonderful. It's the first thing I ever saw that couldn't be improved upon by imagination.

I love the way she describes the most simple things

[Dark Muse]

Foucault's Pendulum by Umerto Eco

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each one is free to take it and run with it. At the end they'll see who's done the best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much; Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy; Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, through, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what is happening, it is too late.

[Adagio]

"The poor cannot always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love no longer. We rich can."
- Howards End.
I'm reading it for my English Literature A-Level. Fantastic book so far. Page 173/293

[Amlóði]

Le premier jardin
Anne Hébert

Au matin, il a fallu demander à Céleste de partir. Elle a sauté hors du lit comme si elle avait un ressort au creux des reins.
—Des draps frais, c’est doux à mort mais, à la longue, ça risque de me faire perdre mon âme, je pars.
Elle a laissé la moitié de ses bagages dans la chambre.

[Trilaque]

Maximum Ride - Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
James Patterson

I vill now destroy de Snickuhs bahrs!

[*Classic*Charm*]

Dostoyevski's The Gambler...

Do you know that I shall kill you one day? I shall kill you not because I shall cease to love you or be jealous, I shall simply kill you because I have an impulse to devour you.

[skasian]

Yes Howards End is a fantastic book, but not my favourite..
I just finished Midnight's children and one of the memorable quotes is

"Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me"
Quite a clever book really

[weltanschauung]

In his little room, with its door of communication blocked with a
wardrobe, his frame of mind remained as uncomfortable as the chair in
which he was seated. His heart ached with a dull, unpleasant
sensation, with a sort of oppressive emptiness.

"The devil take those who first invented balls!" was his reflection.
"Who derives any real pleasure from them? In this province there exist
want and scarcity everywhere: yet folk go in for balls! How absurd,
too, were those overdressed women! One of them must have had a
thousand roubles on her back, and all acquired at the expense of the
overtaxed peasant, or, worse still, at that of the conscience of her
neighbour. Yes, we all know why bribes are accepted, and why men
become crooked in soul. It is all done to provide wives--yes, may the
pit swallow them up!--with fal-lals. And for what purpose? That some
woman may not have to reproach her husband with the fact that, say,
the Postmaster's wife is wearing a better dress than she is--a dress
which has cost a thousand roubles! 'Balls and gaiety, balls and
gaiety' is the constant cry. Yet what folly balls are! They do not
consort with the Russian spirit and genius, and the devil only knows
why we have them. A grown, middle-aged man--a man dressed in black,
and looking as stiff as a poker--suddenly takes the floor and begins
shuffling his feet about, while another man, even though conversing
with a companion on important business, will, the while, keep capering
to right and left like a billy-goat! Mimicry, sheer mimicry! The fact
that the Frenchman is at forty precisely what he was at fifteen leads
us to imagine that we too, forsooth, ought to be the same. No; a ball
leaves one feeling that one has done a wrong thing--so much so that
one does not care even to think of it. It also leaves one's head
perfectly empty, even as does the exertion of talking to a man of the
world. A man of that kind chatters away, and touches lightly upon
every conceivable subject, and talks in smooth, fluent phrases which
he has culled from books without grazing their substance; whereas go
and have a chat with a tradesman who knows at least ONE thing
thoroughly, and through the medium of experience, and see whether his
conversation will not be worth more than the prattle of a thousand
chatterboxes. For what good does one get out of balls? Suppose that a
competent writer were to describe such a scene exactly as it stands?
Why, even in a book it would seem senseless, even as it certainly is
in life. Are, therefore, such functions right or wrong? One would
answer that the devil alone knows, and then spit and close the book."
(dead souls, n.gogol)

[ChinaRose]

Anne of Green Gables - L.M.Montgomery



I love the way she describes the most simple things

When i was in middle school, this book inspired me very much. Nowadays, I picked up it again, and it still inspires me.

[Snowqueen]

Soldiering, my dear madam, is the coward’s art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong and keeping out of harm’s way when you are weak. That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.
Arms and the Man
(Bernard Shaw)

[ryan.778]

"in abstract love for humanity one must always love no one but oneself" from the idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. truely an amazing novel.

[curlyqlink]

Tobacco had nowhere been forbidden in the Bible, but then it had not yet been discovered, and had probably only escaped proscription for this reason. We can conceive of St.Paul or even our Lord Himself drinking a cup of tea, but we cannot imagine either of them as smoking a cigarette, or a churchwarden. Earnest could not deny this, and admitted that Paul would almost certainly have condemned tobacco in good round terms if he had known of its existence.

--The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

'Truth hath no confine'
-Moby-Dick by Herman Melville