Favorite Literary Quote

[andrewmoquin]

There are too many quotes and passages that appeal to me!! I wish I could narrow them all down to just one, but that would be impossible. To put something down that I read recently, it would have to be this:

"The flag's taking off for that filthy place, and our jargon's drowning out the drums.
"In the big cities, we'll keep alive an all-out cynical whoring. We'll massacre all revolts that make sense.
"On to the wasted and dried-up countries! - at the service of the most monstrously efficient military-industrial complexes.
"Goodbye to here, forget what's there. Recruits of good will, we'll have a ferocious philosophy. Not caring for science, eager for comforts - let the rest of the world go blow! This is the real thing. Forwaaaaard, march!" - Arthur Rimbaud

And I'm going to add one more...just because it's so mysterious to me... http://www.literatureforums.net/vb3/images/smilies/smile.gif

"Inside me I feel so alone and unreal"..."Please lift a hand...I tattooed my brain all the way..." - Syd Barrett

“What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.”
“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.”

[Clarissa]

I too have far too many to quote here. But I never cease to be surprised by the prophetic:


Dort, wo man B?cher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.

Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people.
Almansor: A Tragedy (1823) Heinrich Heine (my underlining of the date)
Variant translations:Where they burn books, they will also burn people.

[Sevigne]

?Live all you can; it?s a mistake not to. It doesn?t so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you haven?t had that what have you had?"

Lambert Strether
The Ambassadors
H. James

[Julie]

I just came across this again

"Life itself is a bubble and a scepticism, and a sleep within a sleep."

-Emerson, his essay "Experience"

[lionel]

One of the most profound statements I have ever met with must also be one of the most simple, and yet contained within this apparent simplicity is the whole key to our existence: past, present, and future. The present is in effect non-existent as it constantly disappears into the past, and we move into the future at the same time. There is no such thing as stasis.

And translation is no problem, although I give the original first anyway:

'Nous sommes ce que nous ne sommes pas, et nous ne sommes pas ce que nous sommes.' L'Etre et le N?ant - Jean-Paul Sartre.

'We are what we are not, and we are not what we are.' Being and Nothingness - Jean-Paul Sartre.

[beelzebubbles]

Thanks Julie, I am co-opting your Emerson quote for my signature. I don't agree with it but it definitely has a poetic charm.

Maybe tomorrow I'll see the veracity of its sentiment.;)

[Bjorn]

In her sufferings she read a great deal and discovered that she had lost something, the possession of which she had previously not been much aware of: a soul.

What is that? It is easily defined negatively: it is simply what curls up and hides when there is any mention of algebraic series.
- Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities

[pistolilla]

"Love mxed with fear is sweetest"

The duchess of Malfi
John Webster

[Ramblingsid]

I quite often think of this.....

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!"

... but that must be something to do with having teenage children :)


And this isn't really literary but I like it anyway....

"Freedom is the man that will turn the world upside down, therefore no wonder he hath enemies...."

[Liam]

I quite often think of this.....

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!"
A truly great quote, Ramblingsid, from my favorite play. However, why do I feel sorry for you all of a sudden? :(


Cheers,
L

[Clarissa]

John Le Carr? quoted this as an exergue to A Perfect Spy:

A man who has two women loses his soul. But a man who has two houses
loses his head.

Found it particularly appropriate for all the bi-, tri-, or even more linguals on the site.

[ferns_dad]

nothing is true
everything is permitted

WS Burroughs

[jackaw]

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." -James 1:17, Holy Bible (NIV)

[Ramblingsid]

Ah now, you don't have to feel sorry for me Liam. Honest!:)

Ok I was daft enough to have four children in quick succession and now have four revolting teenagers occupying the house doing little except expecting me to finance their riotous lifestyles. Ok I never seem to have any money these days. OK I cant remember the last time i was allowed to hold the remote control. But it won't last forever. Sooner or later these ugly ducklings will emerge from what Whoopie Goldberg I think called the teen tunnel and will appear as their true selves. Lovely, sensitive caring human beings. And independent to boot. Won't they? Please tell me they will.

Actually - as revolting teenagers go they aren't that bad at all. :)

[hdw]

John Le Carr? quoted this as an exergue to A Perfect Spy:

A man who has two women loses his soul. But a man who has two houses
loses his head.

Found it particularly appropriate for all the bi-, tri-, or even more linguals on the site.

I'm tempted to ask, what's an "exergue", but I don't want to reveal my ignorance, so I'll go on pretending to know.

It's not very sexy or zeitgeisty to quote Old English/Anglo-Saxon, but in times of personal dolour and dolefulness I've always fallen back on the refrain from the OE poem Deor -

??s ofereode ?isses swa m?g

The poet is remembering tragic episodes from the heroic Germanic past, and thinking, well, "that passed... so may this". Or as Monty Python had it, "Always look on the bright side of life!"

Harry

[beelzebubbles]

The inner life is rabid... Rabid and running. A humbling experience the inner life. Everybody should have one.

Philip Roth--His Mistress's Voice

[Clarissa]

hdw

For 'exergue, this is as good as any.

ponendo in esergo > put in exergue, place in exergue (http://www.proz.com/kudoz/italian_to_english/philosophy/508875-ponendo_in_esergo.html)

[hdw]

hdw

For 'exergue, this is as good as any.

ponendo in esergo > put in exergue, place in exergue (http://www.proz.com/kudoz/italian_to_english/philosophy/508875-ponendo_in_esergo.html)

Here's one I can understand -

Main Entry:
ex?ergue
Pronunciation:
\ˈek-ˌsərg, ˈeg-ˌzərg\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
French, from New Latin exergum, from Greek ex out of + ergon work
Date:
1697
: a space on a coin, token, or medal usually on the reverse below the central part of the design

[Clarissa]

...a quotation ... at the very beginning of the book.

Commonly used in French, I'm sorry, I thought it was just as wellknown in English.

[hdw]

I've just finished reading an obituary of the English novelist Stanley Middleton who has died aged 89. In a writing career of over 50 years he wrote more than 40 novels. His motto - taken from Joseph Conrad's Typhoon - was "Keep facing it - always facing it".

Harry

[Bev Stayart]

There are far too many for me to name just one, but I appreciate learning others' favorites.

[Daniel del Real]

It's hard for me to have just quotes. Basically a books gives a statement or an idea that the author is trying to transmit, and that is what I basically try to reach. Not that there are not excellent quotes, but I'm not that kind of person that always have the phrases on their minds.

[beelzebubbles]

We're all mad here.--Lewis Carroll

[K., the land surveyor]

I think I share the same problems many of you here encounter when it comes to literary quotes. They are way too many and my chronic incapability of being brief (I am almost unable of separating the fundamental sentence from its context, everything is fundamental for me!) doesn't exactly make the task easier. And when it comes to poetry, there are cases in which I particularly appreciate couplets or lines only because I find them suggestive in the sounds or in the words used, but they may be passages which many other people may see as irrelevant.
Anyway, I'll write here some of the quotes which have been a constant food for thought for me lately.

"-The soul is born, he said vaguely, first in those moments I told you of. It has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets"
(from James Joyce's A portrait of the Artist as a young man)

"That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it began to sprout? Will it bloom this year?"
(from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, The Burial of the Dead section)

"Je suis l?Empire ? la fin de la d?cadence"
(from Paul Verlaine's poem Langueur)

[lionel]

I've just finished reading an obituary of the English novelist Stanley Middleton who has died aged 89. In a writing career of over 50 years he wrote more than 40 novels. His motto - taken from Joseph Conrad's Typhoon - was "Keep facing it - always facing it".
Harry

Harry, I've only just noticed your post. Stan used to teach me, and this is a link to my comments on him, as well as an inclusion of a letter he wrote to me a few years ago:

Dr Tony Shaw: Stanley Middleton (1919-2009) Dies (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/2009/07/stanley-middleton-1919-2009-dies.html)

[Daniel del Real]

"That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it began to sprout? Will it bloom this year?"
(from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, The Burial of the Dead section)


Amazing one!

[K., the land surveyor]

Amazing one!
The whole poem is worth to be quoted, but in the impossibility of doing it I just reported one of the sentences which most overwhelmed me. I'm really happy you liked it ;)

[Daniel del Real]

Another excellent verse from The Waste Land

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

[K., the land surveyor]

Another excellent verse from The Waste Land

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Yeah, I agree. It's always from The Burial of the Dead section if I'm not mistaken. I mostly prefer prose to poetry, but some poets are able to cast arcane visions and significations in my musings with the pure strenght of their verses, and Eliot is among them.
Jesus, that work seems like a mine whose gold never ends.
I still have to check if someone has already created a topic about it...

By the way, I've got another quote to offer, from William Blake's The Divine Image this time:

For mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

[Liam]

Just found this one in William George Jordan's (1864-1928) The Majesty of Calmness (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6911):


Life... is a privilege, not a penal servitude of so many decades on earth.

Beautiful and succinct.


L.

[Daniel del Real]

Yeah, I agree. It's always from The Burial of the Dead section if I'm not mistaken. I mostly prefer prose to poetry, but some poets are able to cast arcane visions and significations in my musings with the pure strenght of their verses, and Eliot is among them.
Jesus, that work seems like a mine whose gold never ends.
I still have to check if someone has already created a topic about it...



I think there's no thread for the Waste Land, but months ago I created one about T.S. Elliot. Here's the link. (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/writers/13656-t-s-elliot.html)

[Loki]

Nor dim nor red, like God?s own head,
The glorious Sun uprist:
Then all averred, I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist.
?Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist.

I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.

I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;
For the sky and the sea and the sea and the sky
Lay like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet.

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.

Coleridge's Rime

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal ? yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn

[peter_d]

Just found this one in William George Jordan's (1864-1928) The Majesty of Calmness (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6911):

Life... is a privilege, not a penal servitude of so many decades on earth.

Beautiful and succinct.


L.

Wow! Beautiful indeed. I just copied this one in my notebook.

[saliotthomas]

Just found this one in William George Jordan's (1864-1928) The Majesty of Calmness (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6911):

Life... is a privilege, not a penal servitude of so many decades on earth.

Beautiful and succinct.


L.



You guys have it easy then

Says a poor ugly black gay jew dwarf orphan with a limp, a liver cancer, hemoroid and facial ticks who work as a toilet cleaner in Boggota.

[Loki]

It's not very sexy or zeitgeisty to quote Old English/Anglo-Saxon, but in times of personal dolour and dolefulness I've always fallen back on the refrain from the OE poem Deor -

??s ofereode ?isses swa m?g

The poet is remembering tragic episodes from the heroic Germanic past, and thinking, well, "that passed... so may this".


That's a great quote!:D On Tuesday I'll do an exam on Germanic Philology, and I've studied also Medieval Germanic Literatures, among which there's Anglo-Saxon literature (therefore this poem). I've always considered Deor quite a modern poem, as the it describes the misfortune of basically losing his job; the poet (Deor) seems to reflect on his miserable condition through heroes from Germanic legends.
I was told that this is the first poem (probably the first poem in a Germanic language) to have a refrain.

Out of curiosity, is this poem known in the UK? I mean, is it studied at school or anyway known by common people?

[Cleanthess]

Too many favorites to quote. But this little thing from Victor Hugo is amusing enough:
"One feels disgusted to swim in the same ocean he once swam in".

[Stevie B]

Too many favorites to quote. But this little thing from Victor Hugo is amusing enough:
"One feels disgusted to swim in the same ocean he once swam in".

The famous Harpo Marx quote has a similar ring? "I would never join a club that would have me as a member."

[Flint]

Bernardo Soares (or was it Vicente Guedes?) says in Pessoa's Livro do Desassossego (The Book of Disquiet):

"Uma opinião é uma grosseria, mesmo quando não é sincera"

which can be translated into English (Portuguese speakers in the forum please correct me if I make a mistake) as:

"An opinion is an act of rudeness, even when it is not sincere"

Do you agree?

[Hamlet]

"Off with his head"

Richard III,

III (IV) 76

[Cleanthess]

"Off with his head"

Richard III,

III (IV) 76

"Off with their heads!"
The Queen of hearts, Alice Adventures in Wonderland.

[Hamlet]

Now that's a book I must still read Cleanthess, I saw it the other day and thought, it's always or often encountered in our culture as twice or thrice removed from the source, in film or animation or whatever.

And so it seems familiar, but if you haven't read it, well, you just haven't read it.

[Cleanthess]

I envy you, you have so much fun waiting for you. Just a little advice, same one I gave a friend about Gavelis' Vilnius Poker. Read the second part first. The adventures on the other side of the mirror are even better than the ones in wonderland. It's a short book that can easily be read on a lazy Saturday.

[Stevie B]

When I was in my twenties, I used to keep a notebook of intriguing literary quotes that I found in the books I was reading. Unfortunately, not only did I eventually stop this practice, but I also managed to lose the notebook. One quote that has stayed with me, however, is one I often reference when discussing with students the nature of oppression and how frequently the oppressed become the oppressors.

The quote comes from Looking Backward, a utopian novel written by American author Edward Bellamy and published in 1888. The gist of the quote is as follows:

"In life, there are people who ride the cart and people who pull the cart. In some rare cases, one who once pulled the car is later able to ride the cart. However, before the blisters on his hands can fully heal from the work he had once done, the rider is now firmly grasping the whip and cracking it on the backs of those who are now pulling his cart."

[Hamlet]

I envy you, you have so much fun waiting for you. Just a little advice, same one I gave a friend about Gavelis' Vilnius Poker. Read the second part first. The adventures on the other side of the mirror are even better than the ones in wonderland. It's a short book that can easily be read on a lazy Saturday.

Noted. I saw a copy in a Wordsworth edition at The Works, it's a UK bookshop that kind of sells surplus stock and cheaper books, I tend to use the library but spend too much on books at times, so The Works with it's deals helps mop up a few cheaper deals. In NYC, you have The Stand, is it called? I've ordered the odd book from there. You're probably spoilt for choice over there!

But, back to Alice, yeah, I'll try that out, read the second part first...

[Hamlet]

When I was in my twenties, I used to keep a notebook of intriguing literary quotes that I found in the books I was reading. Unfortunately, not only did I eventually stop this practice, but I also managed to lose the notebook. One quote that has stayed with me, however, is one I often reference when discussing with students the nature of oppression and how frequently the oppressed become the oppressors.

The quote comes from Looking Backward, a utopian novel written by American author Edward Bellamy and published in 1888. The gist of the quote is as follows:

"In life, there are people who ride the cart and people who pull the cart. In some rare cases, one who once pulled the car is later able to ride the cart. However, before the blisters on his hands can fully heal from the work he had once done, the rider is now firmly grasping the whip and cracking it on the backs of those who are now pulling his cart."

I wish I'd kept up a sort of "commonplace book", it serves in writing for jotting down some of the interesting things you either hear, read, or think up on a daily basis, very useful, not always, but at least it's there to go to.

Alas patience militates against it.