What is your favourite literary quote and why?

Bodhidharma

Ok, here's a good one. What is your favourity literary quote, and more importantly why?

Mine is from Nick Hornby's excellent High Fidelity. I chose this because I identify strongly with the main character, mostly because I take music far too seriously. Hornby seems to have a knack of writing things I've always thought, but perhaps never verbalised. Of course I could have chosen something a lot more weighty like something from 1984 or one of Shakespeare's, but to me this is perfect . . .

"People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss."
— Nick Hornby (High Fidelity)

Denerick

One of my favourite novels is Rob Roy by Walter Scott. The opening paragraph immediately gripped me; I realised I hadn't read a book quite like this and was unlikely to read anything like it again. It is a truly immersive world, and my first foray into the archaic; and his writing really was archaic. I've been meaning to get back to him but have never plucked up the courage - I gather that on all accounts, Rob Roy was his best novel. Anyway, here we go:

You have requested me, my dear friend, to bestow some of that leisure, with which Providence has blessed the decline of my life, in registering the hazards and difficulties which attended its commencement. The recollection of those adventures, as you are pleased to term them, has indeed left upon my mind a chequered and varied feeling of pleasure and of pain, mingled, I trust, with no slight gratitude and veneration to the Disposer of human events, who guided my early course through much risk and labour, that the ease with which he has blessed my prolonged life might seem softer from remembrance and contrast. Neither is it possible for me to doubt, what you have often affirmed, that the incidents which befell me among a people singularly primitive in their government and manners, have something interesting and attractive for those who love to hear an old man's stories of a past age.

A more cynical kind of person would accuse him of purple prose...

Nhead

Moby Dick: Perfectly illustrates how Ahab's obsession can (just about) destroy everything. (Since it is at the end I've added the spoiler thing:))

A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that ethereal thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it. Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago

AnnyHallsal

Not my favourite ever but read this the other day in Terence Rattigan's Deep Blue Sea and loved it:

"To see yourself as the world sees you may be very brave, but it can
also be very foolish. Why should you accept the world's view of you as
a weak-willed neurotic – better dead than alive? What right have they
to judge? To judge you they must have the capacity to feel as you
feel. And who has? One in a thousand. You alone know how you have
felt. And you alone know how unequal the battle has always been that
your will has had to fight."

EDIT: Why, you ask? Its wisdom.

Valmont

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.

This is my favourite quote because it is the opening of perhaps the most beautifully written novel of all time.

What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.

- The Little Prince


No particular reason.

coffee_cake

Scifi&fantasy don't always lend themselves to striking standalone quotes, but this one popped into my head when I saw the thread:

Desire is like a flame, a torch burning in the night. A traveler in darkness cannot help but be drawn toward it.

King's Dragon, Kate Elliott.

Why? Well, because of the overall book, I suppose.

I know there are a dozen others I've forgotten right now, though!

Hermy

From Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike:

The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know keep showing up as if the fun’s just started.

I can't tell you why I like this quote. It's not my very favourite - I'm not sure I have one - but it's just one of many brilliant lines you come across when you read Updike that are simply breathtaking.

Agonist

I just love this one. Proud, vain and haughty, what a woman!

Bathsheba Everdene in Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.

Don't anyone suppose that because I'm a woman, I don't understand the difference between bad goings-on and good. I shall be up before you're awake, I shall be afield before you're up, and I shall have breakfasted before you're afield. In short, I shall astonish you all.

Not entirely sure if this is only in the film or direct from the book. I don't have it at hand.

smokedeels

“I wish I was a duck on Alexandra Park pond. I could swim, and fly, and walk, and have three wives, and everything I wanted. But I'm a man. I have a mind, and three library tickets, and everything I want is impossible.” - Lanark: A Life in Four Books by Alasdair Gray.

I'm not sure if it’s as applicable as when I originally read it, but this always stuck with me. I was expecting adult life to be painfully mundane and soul destroying, but as it turns out it’s not so bad…. still, those Ducks have it easy and adult life can be limiting at times.

dr gonzo

I think ive added these before but i love opening lines, i really appreciate how the author has decided to set the very start of a book.

"It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain, he fell madly in love with him."
-- Catch 22. Love how this reels you right into the manic humour that runs through this book.

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
-- 1984. Immediately you know something is off about this society.

Brilliant.

MonkeyBalls

So many from 1984 alone. One off my head:

"In philosophy, or religion, or politics, or ethics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four."

(Sounds deceptively simple)

Dilynnio

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

Kahlil Gibran
Lebanese artist & poet in US (1883 - 1931)

So many people who have suffered more than others are people with amazing souls. A lot of them their stories are never told or even heard.

With life experience comes suffering and with suffering comes strength and indeed scars.

This quote could even be applied to our country or to individuals.

Enkidu

O Ur-shanabi, climb Uruk's walls and walk back and forth!
Survey its foundations, examine the brickwork!
Were its bricks not fired in an oven?
Did the Seven Sages not lay its foundation?

- Gilgamesh, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Standard Babylonian version

Why: Don't want to spoil the story, but it is the culmination of the very strong humanist (roughly) message of the epic.

Under your fearsome radiance,
your terrible glare and storm, the people
turned their steps toward you in mute dread
of all the ME,
you had grasped the most terrible and deeply stirring--
Mankind opened the gateway of tears, on your account
They must walk the path to the house of all the great laments,
on your account.

- En-hedu-ana, circa 2260 B.C.

Why: Earliest known author and poet, the poem in general contains imagery and literary techniques unique to early Akkadian literature that I really like.

Slow Show

Most of my favourite quotes come from The Bell Jar. It's not my favourite book, but never has there been a book I can relate to so easily.

I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and fell all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life.
And I am horribly limited.

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery - air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, 'this is what it is to be happy.'

And one slightly less profound one that completely portrays my present scenario.

I sometimes wonder why I don't go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip one more hour of sleep and live.

Paddy Samurai

James Carlos Blake is currently one of my favourite Authors.I love this piece that I am reading at the moment.Not that I have any base desires but I have been wondering how much truth is in it,how much do we fear consequences.

"Mark me William T.The mass of men know that their hearts are a riot of lusts and base desires, but they fear the risks of acceding to those wants.They desire to do violence to their enemies but are too fearful of provoking violence unto themselves.They fear consequences, you see ,and such fear is the rankest sort of cowardice.They cannot bear this truth and so they cleave to the lie of morality,that sum of shams,to defend themselves against it,and thus do they lay a second kind of cowardice atop the first.They warrant no pity."

epgc3fyqirnbsx

Of Mice and Men

“A water snake slipped along the pool, its head held up like a little periscope”
-First Chapter

"A water snake glided smoothly up the pool, twisting its periscope head from side to side; and it swam the length of the pool and came to the legs of a motionless heron that stood in the shallows. A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically."
-Final chapter

Quotes from the beginning and the end that are an illustration of the harsh judgements that can occour on an incident.
The only book that made me cry

fontanalis

For some reason the following line from Graham Greenes "The Quiet American" has stuck in my mind.
Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world meaning no harm.

Belle E. Flops

From the Lord of the Rings.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

I don't know if it is my all time favourite quote but I do love it, and it is the only one that I have never forgotten.

patff

"Innocence must die young if it isn't to kill the souls of men." from Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene

Giselle

''Love makes you real''

From 'The Velveteen Rabbit' by Margery Williams.

Those four words were fuel for my young imagination, and gave my toys an inner life I alone imagined.

I think it still holds true in lots of ways.:)

Belle E. Flops

To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts - Henry Miller

longshanks

If I had been born a woman I would certainly have been a prostitute. Since I had been born a man, I craved women constantly, the lower the better. And yet women-good women-frightened me because they wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Nothing was lost when they left. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price. Either way I was lost. A strong man would give up both. I wasn’t strong. So I continued to struggle with women, with the idea of women.


you have to love Bukowski , dirty, drunk, hilarious,

lgsmith

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

I like this quote .I don,t know why but i like this .

'Every bond is a bond to sorrow'

James Joyce "A Painful Case" from Dubliners.

Coriolanus

A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

The cramped monotony of my existence grinds me away by the grain.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

AnnyHallsal

I love this one from McEwan's Amsterdam:

"We know so little about each other. We lie mostly submerged, like ice floes, with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white."

To bear it in mind, is to be kinder to those we meet, I think.

skylight1987

Giselle wrote: »

''Love makes you real''

From 'The Velveteen Rabbit' by Margery Williams.

Those four words were fuel for my young imagination, and gave my toys an inner life I alone imagined.

I think it still holds true in lots of ways.:)

one of my favourite stories of all time , beautifully written

Eramen

My favourite quote is from Cervantes' early novel 'Don Quixote';

"One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this."


I would class it as my all-time favourite because they are words that can be applied not only to one person, but also can be applied on a universal level, how we as differentiated personalities and creatures must always continue onwards in pursuit of the highest ideal - even when all seems set against us - and we remember that every effort on this path is never wasted, never vanquished, instead it resounds, again and again, throughout all ages to come.

It reminds us that idealism is the source of morality, as is falls outside conventional boundaries, with all of the standards and limits that inevitably comes with such a materialism. Most of all, it reminds us of mankind's original nobility, for we were all born as noble specimens, yet this does not mean we will pass-away in an ignoble state [due to the assorted corruptions & shortcomings of daily life/the world], as Cervantes highlights in his quote. The decrepit and despicable is what will really pass-away, by our doing or not.

In other words, man becomes capable of shaping the world from his highest internal elements, one which arrives to him from outside and above the natural sphere of his labour.

Man through his efforts becomes divine, a source of miracles - despite all faults. The world becomes better too, as if sensing the change within its human inhabitant and his discovery of true meaning.

It is not easy to be noble, to pursue Arya, never has been. Don Quixote was a fool to many, but assuredly a hero to many, many more. But he is not the only one by any means..

'Courage Merry, courage for our friends! - Eowyn'

"Before all else be armed.."

You know the rest!

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck.

"It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world."


And from "Cloudstreet" by Tim Winton. (I don't have the book on hand so this may not be exactly right.)

"From the broad vaults and spaces you can see it all again because it never ceases to be. And you can't help but worry for them, love them, want for them - those who go on down the close, foetid galleries of time and space without you. "

Harry Angstrom

"If I had a good quote I'd be wearing it"

Bob Dylan, Poet.