Quotes from Books

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

"These were the questions that immediately tormented his inexperienced and virgin heart, that this most righteous of righteous men should be given over to such derisive and spiteful jeering from a crowd so frivolous and so far beneath him." - The Brothers Karamazov; "An Opportune Moment"

[Emil Miller]

This deterioration in public behaviour had been caused by a naive belief in the post-war political consensus that, because what had happened in Germany was wrong, the right way to govern a country was to renounce punitive sentencing and rely on the theory of rehabilitation to uphold the rule of law. The significance of this miscalculation was not lost on either the criminal fraternity or the legal profession, for the obvious consequence of such a policy was that criminality would flourish to the benefit of both.


From Pro Bono Publico by Emil Miller

[Miss Juventus]

Adam, the most honest man it was possible to find, living all his life on stolen money. Now Aron his son, who tried to be so pure, living all his life on the profits of a whorehouse.

From "East of Edan" for Steinbeck.

[Dark Muse]

I cannot say enough how much I love Camus. Reading some of the things he says, is like listening to my own thoughts.

From The Fall

This is true that we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don't want to improve ourselves, or be bettered, for we should first have to be judged by default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue. We lack the energy of evil as well as the energy of good. Do you know Dante? Really? The devil you say! Then you know that Dante accepts the idea of neutral angels in the quarrel between God and Satan. And he puts them in Limbo, a sort of vestibule of his Hell. We are in the vestibule, che ami.

[Dirtbag]

Formulated by their art the most insipid statements become
enormously significant. For example, I proffer the constatation,
'Black ladders lack bladders.' A self-evident truth, one on
which it would not have been worth while to insist, had I chosen
to formulate it in such words as 'Black fire-escapes have no
bladders,' or, 'Les echelles noires manquent de vessie.' But
since I put it as I do, 'Black ladders lack bladders,' it
becomes, for all its self-evidence, significant, unforgettable,
moving. The creation by word-power of something out of nothing--
what is that but magic?

Crome Yellow, Aldous Huxley

This book is charming.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

“…About none other than the universal questions: is there a God, is there immortality? And those who do not believe in God, well, they will talk about socialism and anarchism, about transforming the whole of mankind according to a new order, but it’s the same damned thing, the questions are all the same only from the other end. And many, many of all the most original Russian boys do nothing but talk about the eternal questions, now, in our time. Isn’t it so?” – Book V; Chapter 3 “The Brothers Get Acquainted”

[wessexgirl]

I've just bought The Brothers Karamazov Gilliat, and am really looking forward to reading it, after all the rave reviews.

"If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"

"If they would rather die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end."

"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.

"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"

Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol

It's that time of year again, Good old Charlie!

[AliceTwists]

i wish i could remember one from lord of the rings.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Wessexgirl, I'm happy to learn that you will be reading TBK. I'll try not to spoil it too much for you.

“Listen: if everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it? It’s quite incomprehensible why they should have to suffer, and why they should buy harmony with suffering. Why do they get thrown into the pile, to manure someone’s future harmony with themselves? – The Brother Karmazov, Book V; Chapter 4 “Rebellion”

__________________
The following is from “The Raven” – A biography of Sam Houston
by Marquis James; Copyright 1929

“The brothers paddled up to find the runaway lying under a tree, scanning lines of the “Iliad”. He was invited to return home. Sam relates that he stood “straight as an Indian,” and (with a creditable touch of Cherokee imagery for a beginner) replied that he “preferred measuring deer tracks to tape” and “the wild liberty of the Red Men better than the tyranny of his own brothers” He begged to be excused as “his translation from the Greek” claimed his interest and he desired to read it in peace.” – Book I; Chapter 2: Deer Tracks and Tape”

[marcolfo]

just off the top of my head.

so it goes. k vonegunt

oh god we know what we are, but not what we can be. d alligieri

por su experiencia sabia que uno no se muere cuando debe sino cuando puede. g g marquez ( sorry for the spanglish)

and therefore he willed that the hearts of men should seek beyond the world, and should find no rest therein, but they should have a virtue , to shape their lives amid the powers and chances of the world. j r r tolkien

always in motion, the future is. yoda


i'll be back with more

i promise

[Dark Muse]

From Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Now, that summer term with Sebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence.

[Dinkleberry2010]

(a paraphrase) Ariel to Prospero in The Tempist: Be of good cheer, sir, our revels are ended."

[quasimodo1]

from Olympio: The Life of
Victor Hugo
by Andre' Maurois
translated by Gerard Hopkins

Chapter 18 ANANKE'

"Notre-Dame is very old; but maybe she will
attend the funeral of that Paris which saw her
birth."
Gerard De Nerval

HUGO finished NOTRE-DAME de PARIS at the beginning of January, 1831. He had written the whole of this long novel in six months, bringing it to conclusion at the very end of the time-limit set by Gosselin. It had been, as a matter of fact, merely a question of the actual writing and composition. The documentary material had been accumulated over a period of three years: histories, chronicles, charters, inventories. Hugo had read widely. He had explored the Paris of Louis XI, and examined what remained of its old houses. In particular, he had made himself familiar with every nook and cranny of the cathedral -- its spiral staircases, its mysterious closets hollowed out of the stones, its inscriptions, both ancient and modern. Everything about the book, he hoped, would be historically correct: the scene-painting, the persons, the language. "But that is what matters least in it. Its sole merit, if it has one, lies in the fact that it is a work of the imagination, whim and fancy." In strict truth, if the erudition is real, the characters seem to be more than real, larger than life. The archdeacon Claude Frollo is a monster; Quasimodo, one of those hideous, bulbous-headed dwarfs with which Hugo's imagination teemed; Esmeralda, a vision of grace rather than a woman.

[Dark Muse]

From A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal.

[MarkC]

hi,

This quote is from Romeo & Juliet by Shakespeare
Good Night, Good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow." - (Act II, Scene II)

This quote is from Candida by George Bernard Shaw

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
Candida, Act I (1898)

MarkC