screw the politics...literary quotes thread
I'll get started with this:
1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.
Kurt Vonnegut: Breakfast of Champions
1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.
Kurt Vonnegut: Breakfast of Champions
Comments
- epitaph for Billy Pilgrim
-Friedrich Nietzsche's 'Ecce Homo'
I read this quote when I was studying Nietzsche in University and I thought it was the coolest things ever. I don't anymore but it was the first one that popped into my head. So there ya go.
Originally posted by InactionMan
"If a man wishes to rid himself of a feeling of unbearable oppression, he may have to take to Hashish."
-Friedrich Nietzsche's 'Ecce Homo'
I read this quote when I was studying Nietzsche in University and I thought it was the coolest things ever. I don't anymore but it was the first one that popped into my head. So there ya go.
neechee just won a point in my head.
"And the lamp - light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore."
-the Poe's "The Raven"
EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
-Wordsworth
("Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings")
Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
from The Gulag Archipelago
Desiderata, Max Ehrmann 1927
Originally posted by dmz
And how can you bring it home to them? By an inspiration? By a vision? A dream? Brothers! People! Why has life been given you? In the deep, deaf stillness of midnight, the doors of the death cells are being swung open--and great-souled people are being dragged out to be shot. On all the railroads of the country this very minute, right now, people who have just been fed salt herrings are licking their dry lips with bitter tongues. They dream of the happiness of stretching out one?s legs and of the relief one feels after going to the toilet. In Orotukan the earth thaws only in summer and only to the depth of three feet?and only then can they bury the bones of those who died during the winter. And you have the right to arrange your own life under the blue sky and the hot sun, to get a drink of water, to stretch, to travel wherever you like without a convoy. So what?s this about unwiped feet? And what?s this about a mother-in-law? What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I?ll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusory?property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life?don?t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn?t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don?t freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don?t claw at your insides. If your back isn?t broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes see, and if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart?and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it might be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how your are imprinted in their memory!
Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
from The Gulag Archipelago
Originally posted by Naderfan
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble, it's a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantement, it is as perrenial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
Desiderata, Max Ehrmann 1927
So, we're not allowed to use paragraphs when quoting?
And Levin remembered a scene he had latelywitnessed between Dolly and her children. The children, left to themselves, had begun cooking raspberries over the candles and squirting milk into each other's mouths with a syringe. Their mother, catching them at these pranks, began reminding them in Levin's presence of the trouble their mischief gave to the grown-up people, and that this trouble was all for their sake, and that if they smashed the cups they would have nothing to drink their tea out of, and that if they wasted the milk, they would have nothing to eat, and die of hunger.
And Levin had been struck by the passive, weary incredulity with which the children heard what their mother said to them. They were simply annoyed that their amusing play had been interrupted, and did not believe a word of what their mother was saying. They could not believe it indeed, for they could not take in the immensity of all they habitually enjoyed, and so could not conceive that what they were destroying was the very thing they lived by.
Leo Tolstoy
from Anna Karenina
"I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Stowe <sp?> paraphrasing Voltaire
O my beloved
how sweet it is
to go down
and bathe in the pool
before your eyes
letting you see how
my drenched linen dress
marries
the beauty of my body.
Come, look at me.
Egypt c. 4000 BCE
Howl, howl, howl: O, you are men of stones;
Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so
That heaven's vault should crack.
"The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction."
And it's pronounced 'wroth' you damn Americans.
Literary, Jack Kerouac "On the Road":
"....because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a common place thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...."
Why aren't poems literary quotes anyway?
TS Eliot, "Little Gidding":
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Originally posted by X X
One that I think is quite attributable to many of these threads...
"I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Stowe <sp?> paraphrasing Voltaire
Love the thread BR and the message above in quotes is pricless!
Fellowship
Lewis Carroll
Much have I seen and known...yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades forever and forever when I move.
"Ulysses" - Tennyson
Nice thread, BR. It's refreshing to have other kinds of ideas floating through here for awhile.
Without interrupting each other, we both said at the same time, "Let's never get out of touch with each other." And we never have, although her death has come between us.
Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but still I reach out to them. Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.
both from Norman Maclean, A River Rins Through It
Once upon a time
-Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love by Robert A. Heinlein
-Jubal Harshaw in Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.
Originally posted by BR
-Jubal Harshaw in Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.
?The strangest thing in a strange land is the stranger who visits it.?
\t\t---Openning line of Cannibal Tours a film by O?Rourke
?Art is not the reflection of reality, it is the reality of that reflection.?
\t\t---Jean-Luc Godard
?Fiction is not there because language is distant from things; but language is thier distance, the light in which they are to be found and their innaccessability.?
\t\t---M. Foucault, Distance, Aspect, Origine