Quotes from Books

[tailor STATELY]

The Founding Fathers of the USA held Cicero (106-43 B.C.) in high esteem as a great political thinker:

"Cicero's compelling honesty led him to conclude that once the reality of the Creator is clearly identified in the mind, the only intelligent approach to government, justice, and human relations is in terms of the laws which the Supreme Creator has already established. The Creator's order of things is called Natural Law."

The 5000 Year Leap/A Miracle That Changed the World/Principles of Freedom 101: Skousen

[Dark Muse]

From Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence

In the last resort, she believed in Mammon, the flesh, and the devil--those at least were not sham. She was a priestess without belief, without conviction, suckled in a creed outworn, and condemned to the reiteration of mysterious that were not divine to her. Yet there was no escape. She was a leaf upon a dying tree. What help was there then, but to fight still for the old, withered truths, to die for the old, outworn belief, to be a sacred and inviolate priestess of desecrated mysteries? The old great truths had been true. And she was a leaf on the old great tree of knowledge that was withering now. To the old and last truth she must be faithful even though cynicism and mockery took place at the bottom of her soul.

[Enamored Reader]

I have just finished George Eliot's "The Mill on the Floss". It was beautiful and in some ways inspiring. Here are some lines:

"If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have been in paradise, and we could always see that one being first towards whome...I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes- love would be a sign that two people ought to belong to each other. But i see- I feel it is not so now: there are things we must renounce in life- some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark to me- but I see one thing clearly- that I must not, cannot seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural- but surely pity and faithfulness and memory are too. And they would live in me still, and punish me if I didn't obey them. I should be haunted by the suffering I had caused. Our love would be poisoned. Don't urge me; help me- help me, because I love you."

[qimissung]

"So we sit, eternally weaving stories, he on his couch, I in my chair; behind us, the oblong circle of light in front of the rocking chair becomes narrower and smaller, and now it disappears. He turns on the lamp and we continue our talk."

Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran

[Tsuyoiko]

"He Who Himself begot, middler the Holy Ghost, and Himself sent himself, Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on crosstree, Who let Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the right hand of His Own Self but yet shall come in the latter day to doom the quick and dead when all the quick shall be dead already."

- James Joyce, Ulysses

I always said the concept of god was incoherent

[Dark Muse]

From the On the Road by Jack Kerouac

I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was--I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some strange, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon.

[lupe]

"What is strongly anticipated by the mind, is often supplied by it"

Margaret Atwood ("Alias Grace")

[King Mob]

"The reader! You, dogged, uninsultable, print-oriented bastard, it's you I'm addressing, who else, from inside this monstrous fiction. You've read me this far, then? Even this far? For what discreditable motive? How is it you don't go to a movie, watch TV, stare at a wall, play tennis with a friend, make amorous advances to the person who comes to your mind when I speak of amorous advances? Can nothing surfeit, saturate you, turn you off? Where's your shame?"
-John Barth, short story Life-Story from Lost in the Funhouse

I've just fiinished reading that story. Amazing.

[JoBourne]

Humpty Dumpty.
Did he fall, or was he pushed, or was it that he jumped?
Or was it, in fact, none of the above?

From Robert Rankin's, 'the hollow chocolate bunnies of the apocalypse.'

It's not Kai Lung and it's not Jasper Fforde, but it's a fast amusing read. Glad I picked it up.

[Olga4real]

"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer." the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky. "Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams."
Paulo Coelho "The Alchemist"

[Page Turner]

"Even useless rubbish is collected in the courtyards nowadays and used for some purpose,even broken glass is considered a useful commodity, but something so precious, so rare, as the love of a refined, young, intelligent, and good woman is utterly thrown away and wasted."

An Anonymous Story ~ From the Essential Tales of Chekhov.

[mikemaster70]

i recently just read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and loved it! one of my favorite quotes is towards the end, so it might be somewhat considered a spoiler:

"He looked around, and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward.He had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter's work, and all that that meant."

[Pryderi Agni]

What is history? Lest anyone think the question meaningless or superflous, I will take as my text two passages relating respectively to the first and second incarnations of the Cambridge Modern History.

From What Is History? by E.H. Carr.

[Beautifull]

i recently just read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and loved it! one of my favorite quotes is towards the end, so it might be somewhat considered a spoiler:

"He looked around, and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward.He had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter's work, and all that that meant."

I do believe my brother who is currently going to fifth grade has picked up that book, though I doubt that he shall finish it...he tends to pick up large books with millions of words and turns it back in the next week, only reading a couple of pages Hopefully this one he'll finish.

[mikemaster70]

I do believe my brother who is currently going to fifth grade has picked up that book, though I doubt that he shall finish it...he tends to pick up large books with millions of words and turns it back in the next week, only reading a couple of pages Hopefully this one he'll finish.

haha, i was the same way, although i would pick the book back up in the next year or so and attempt to finish it