Quotes from Books

[bouquin]

'Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.'

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'Be honest and poor, by all means - but I shall not envy you; I do not much think I shall even respect you. I have a much greater respect for those that are honest and rich.'

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'I must look down upon any thing contented with obscurity when it might rise to distinction.'

[Maletbon]

‘I have no notion of two sisters wearing the same clothes, the same flaunting meretricious gawds, the same tortured Gorgon curls low over their brutish criminal foreheads; it bespeaks a superfetation of vulgarity, both innate and studiously acquired.’

from H.M.S Surprise by Patrick O’Brian

For lovers of literature, and sea stories, Patty O is freakin sweet. As you can tell, his humor can be wicked.

[Silas Thorne]

'Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.'

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

[Virgil]

The Death of Virgil: A Novel by Hermann Broch, Translated by Jean Starr Untermeyer.

This is one long stream of conscious of Virgil's (yes, the Roman poet) last hours before his death. It supposed to be a great novel by an Austrian writer, but frankly I'm not finding it so great. Well, here's a sample sentence.

The heavy portal of fear had sprung open and behind it the cavern of horror reared up, mighty, and all-encompassing. Something unkown, fearful, ghastly, assailing him simultaneously from within and without, ripped him up; a sudden malignant outbreak, superlatively painful, tore him aloft with all the devastating, convulsive, stiflingly desperate force inherent in the first lightening-and-thunderclap of a rising storm; thus chokingly it drove into him, death-dealing, death-threatening, yet the seconds follwed hard upon each other enriched in flashes the empty space between them with that inconceivable thing called life, and it seemed to him as if hope blinked up once again in those flashes while, with the fleetness of breath or a glance, he was being torn aloft in the clutch of the iron hand; it seemed to him that all this was happening so that the neglected, the lost, the unfinished might still be retrieved if only in this instant of renewed second wind; overcome as he was by pain, by fear, by torpor, he knew not whether it was hope or no hope, but he did know that every second of new-lived life was needful and momentous, he knew he had been hounded for the sake of this up-flickering of life, whether it lasted a short or a long time, chased up and away from the couch of torpor; he knew he had to escape the breath-lack of the narrow-walled and shut-in room, that once more he must send his glance outward, turned away from himself, turned away from the zones of himself, turned away from the dreary field of death, that once more, for a single time, perhaps for the last time, he must come to comprehend the vastness of life, he must, oh he must again behold the stars; and starkly lift up from the bed, held in the clutching fist that gripped into his whole body and yet grasped him from without, he moved himself with stiff-jointed legs, like a marionette conveyed on wires, uncertainly as though on stilts, back to the window against the frame of which he leaned exhausted, a little bent over because of his weakness but despite this held upright so that, as with elbows drawn back he satisfied his hunger for air with deep regular breaths, his being might disclose itself anew, participating in the breath-stream of the yearned-back spheres.

Yes, that sentence is that long. And that is a typical sentence in the book. In fact that's one of the better ones. One sentence actually went for almost two pages long. I don't know if I'm going to finish this novel. Perhaps I'll have to slug through.

[mona amon]

LOL, Vigil, I'm curious to know how many pages that novel has!

I'm reading Pickwick Papers.

'I am ruminating,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'on the strange mutability of human affairs.'

'Ah! I see- in at the palace door one day, out at the window the next. Philosopher, sir?'

'An observer of human nature, sir,' said Mr. Pickwick.

'Ah, so am I. Most people are when they've little to do and less to get. Poet, sir?'

'My friend, Mr. Snodgrass has a strong poetic turn.' said Mr. Pickwick.

'So have I,'said the stranger. 'Epic poem,- ten thousand lines- revolution of July- composed it on the spot- Mars by day, Apollo by night,- bang the field-piece, twang the lyre.'

[bazarov]

There are two types of human - kind and animalistic. First will try to achieve happiness for him and for the whole world; and a second one will try achieve his happiness but he will be ready to destroy happiness of all the world for that.

[Tallon]

At Capracotta, he had told me, there were trout in the stream below the town. It was forbidden to play the flute at night. When the young men serenaded only the flute was forbidden. Why, i had asked. Because it was bad for the girls to hear the flute at night. The peasant all called you "Don" and when you met them they took off their hats. His father hunted everyday and stopped to eat at the houses of peasant. They were always honored. For a foreigner to hunt he must present a certificate that he had never been arrested. There were bears on the Gran Sasso D'Italia but it was a long way. Aquila was a fine town. It was cool in the summer at night and the spring in Abruzzi was the most beautiful in Italy. But what was lovely was the fall to go hunting through the chestnut woods. The birds were all good because they fed on grapes and you never took a lunch because the peasants were always honored if you would eat with them at their houses. After a while i went to sleep.

A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemmingway.

[AshleyMare]

"It was strange, I reflected, as we went out into th golden evening of the Byzantine streets, that even in the wierdest circumstances, the most troubling episodes of one's life, the greatest divides from home and familiarity, there were these moments of undeniable joy."
-Page 300 from the Historian by Elizabeth Kostovo

[Terror Firmer]

A book I just finished Blind Voices by Tom Reamy...

The boys tiptoed to the cot, barely breathing. A noise reached their ears, a rustling of bedclothes, and a darker darkness rose from the cot. Jack made a little squeeking noise deep in his throat and they backed away until they bumped against the wall.

"Angel?" Finney said in an almost inaudible whisper.

There was movement from the cot. A match struck, momentarily blinding them. They squinted and pressed against the wall. The match moved to a candle. The lighted candle was lifted and the light fell on a mass of snakes writhing over a pair of glittering eyes.

Finney and Jack shrieked and grabbed each other. They hid their eyes, turned their backs and hunkered against the wall, feeling their flesh already turning to stone. Medusa sat on the cot, watching them curiously.

Finney slowly raised his arm and peeked out with one eye. Jack's arm was only an inch away. It looked , not a bit like stone. Then Jack's arm lowered slightly, uncovering his round eye.They stared at each other in amazement. They turned hesitantly, ready to flee if necessary, and saw the Medusa sitting motionless on her cot watching them.

"I looked at her and I didn't turn to stone," Jack said with a slow exhalation.

"I guess that part of it was just a myth after all," Finney said with some disappointed, "but she's certainly a real Medusa all right."

"How do you know?" Jack asked doubtfully. "She didn't turn us to stone."

Finney sighed and looked at him sideways. "If she was a fake she'd take her snakes off before she went to bed, wouldn't she?"

Jack twisted his mouth, thinking seriously. "Yeah, you're right," he said. "She's a real Medusa, sure enough."

They looked around the wagon. The mermaid floated in her tank, possibly asleep, but appearing to be dead. Beyond her the snake woman lay coiled in her cage.

"Look, Finney!" Jack hissed in excitement. "The Snake Goddess! I want to get a closer look."

"We're supposed to be looking for Angel, Jack," Finney said impatiently, feeling slightly betrayed.

"We've got time to look at the Snake Goddess, haven't we?" Jack demanded, arching his eyebrows.

Finney rolled his eyes and nodded reluctantly.

"Excuse me, ma'am," Jack said to the Medusa, his voice cracking. "Pardon us for bustin'in. We were lookin' for Angel and we got the wrong wagon. Is it all right if we take a closer look at the Snake Goddess?"

"And could you tell us which wagon Angel is in?" Finney added.

The Medusa looked from one to the other, moving her whole head instead of just her eyes. Her face showed only curiousity. Jack and Finney looked at each other.

Jack jerked his head and they moved cautiously to the snake woman's cage, casting wary glances at the Medusa. The snake woman was asleep, but stirred at their approach, candlelight sparkling dully on her gun-metal scales. Medusa followed them with her fascinated gaze, moving nothing but her head. Finney and Jack knelt down and pressed their faces against the bars. The snake woman looked back at them, her silver hair cresting over her head like a startled cockatoo. Her coils shifted slightly and she moved closer to them, her head making quick, birdlike movements. She watched them for a moment, then reached out her little hand and placed it delicately on Jack's brown grubby fingers, grasping one of the bars.

"Hey!" he breathed. "She likes me."

He suddenly reached up and unfastened the latch of the cage.

"You shouldn't do that," Finney protested.

"Ssssssh!" Jack hissed and opened the cage door. The snake woman looked at him expectantly. Jack reached his hand in.

Then Medusa stood up and went to them, leaning over to see what they were doing. Finney and Jack both jerked their heads around and stared into the nest of snakes two inches from their noses. Jack slammed the cage door and they bolted. They clattered across the wagon floor and clumped down the steps and were in the street before they even slowed down.

Medusa turned and watched them go with startled eyes. She heard a squeak behind her and twisted her head around. The door of the snake woman's cage opened slowly under its own weight. One hinge made a thin, rusty protest. The snake woman watched the opening door and swayed slightly. She hesitated for a moment, then flowed from the cage, across the floor, through the wagon door and down the steps, holding her little arms before her, rushing to the meet the night.

Medusa watched her leave and nothing moved but her head.

I'll probably post another episode later from the novel.

[bazarov]

''Ideas will come; if you think about things enough.''
John Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath

[Silas Thorne]

Kress and van Leewen, 2006 'Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design'

Real authors and real readers we cannot ultimately know. This bracketing out of real authors and real readers carries the risk of forgetting that texts, literary and artistic texts as much as mass media texts, are produced in the context of real social institutions, in order to play a very real role in social life – in order to do certain things to or for their readers, and in order to communicate attitudes towards aspects of social life and towards people who participate in them, whether authors and readers are consciously aware of this or not.

[Virgil]

LOL, Vigil, I'm curious to know how many pages that novel has!

Almost five hundred, and I've read a little over a hundred. I can't make up m mind if I should continue.

[wron]

Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do you seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth: That all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her upon the treacherous, slavish shore.

[Dr. Hill]

There are two types of human - kind and animalistic. First will try to achieve happiness for him and for the whole world; and a second one will try achieve his happiness but he will be rady to destroy happiness of all the world for that.

Is that worth a read?

[bazarov]

Is that worth a read?

Yes, of course.