S/o The Greatest Sentences in Literature Game

[Spy Car]

Simple rules: Share some of your favorite passages in literature. Sentences (one, or a few) that make you think: Good gravy, language is a beautiful thing!!

 

Please include the author and the work.

 

OK, it is not that much of a "game," but it sounds more fun if we pretend :D

 

I will start with this almost randomly picked sentence from Moby Dick (a work that is filled stem-to-stern with brilliantly turned phrases) that is (for the moment) in my sig.

 

But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than before.

~ Herman Melville (Moby Dick)

 

Your turn.

 

Bill

Edited August 2, 2011 by Spy Car

[unsinkable]

There were two more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a parched old turkey hen crying for water and called, "Bailey Boy, Bailey Boy!" as if her heart would break.

 

"Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.

 

"Maybe He didn't raise the dead," the old lady mumbled, not knowing what she was saying and feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her.

 

"I wasn't there so I can't say He didn't," The Misfit said. "I wisht I had of been there," he said, hitting the ground with his fist. "It ain't right I wasn't there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now." His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children !" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.

 

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Flannery O'Connor

[Missouri Okie]

"Hey, Boo," I said.

[Spy Car]

Nice one Unsinkable!

 

Sticking with the Southern vein, here are the first two lines of William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!

 

FROM a little after two o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that - a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them. There was a wistaria vine blooming for the second time that summer on a wooden trellis before one window, into which sparrows came now and then in random gusts, making a dry vivid dusty sound before going away: and opposite Quentin, Miss Coldfield in the eternal black which she had worn for forty-three years now, whether for sister, father, or nothusband none knew, sitting so bolt upright in the straight hard chair that was so tall for her that her legs hung straight and rigid as if she had iron shinbones and ankles, clear of the floor with that air of impotent and static rage like children's feet, and talking in that grim haggard amazed Voice until at last listening would renege and hearing-sense self-confound and the long-dead object of her impotent yet indomitable frustration would appear, as though by outraged recapitulation evoked, quiet inattentive and harmless, out of the biding and dreamy and victorious dust.

Edited August 2, 2011 by Spy Car

[chepyl]

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

"Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carrol (I love the entire poem, but chose only to type the first stanza for time). This is my FAVORITE poem to recite. I enjoy this one more than Shakespeare. It just rolls off the tongue and the words are so fun to say!

 

And my favorite parody of that poem: "Jabber-Whacky or Dreaming after Falling Asleep Watching TV" by Isabelle di Caprio

 

'Twas Brillo, and the GE Stoves,

Did Proctor-Gamble in the Glade;

All Pillsbury were the Taystee loaves,

And in a Minute Maid.

[Belacqua]

The ancients waited for cherry blossoms, grieved when they were gone, and lamented their passing in countless poems. How very ordinary the poems had seemed to Sachiko when she read them as a girl, but now she knew, as well as one could know, that grieving over fallen cherry blossoms was more than a fad or a convention.

 

Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters

(not sure if it counts, as it is in translation, but still a nifty couple of sentences)

[Spy Car]

The ancients waited for cherry blossoms, grieved when they were gone, and lamented their passing in countless poems. How very ordinary the poems had seemed to Sachiko when she read them as a girl, but now she knew, as well as one could know, that grieving over fallen cherry blossoms was more than a fad or a convention.

 

Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters

(not sure if it counts, as it is in translation, but still a nifty couple of sentences)

 

Beautiful!

 

Bill

[Liz CA]

"Please refrain from the intimacy of whispering...", Emma, Jane Austen :lol:

Laugh every time.

[lillysmom216]

"So In America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going,all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear?" Jack Kerouac - "On The Road"

[Ria]

"Let us roll all our strength, and all

Our sweetness, up into one ball;

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Thorough the iron gates of life.

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run."

 

Andrew Marvell

To His Coy Mistress

[Kathleen in VA]

Kind of long but one of my favorites because it makes me laugh every time I read it:

 

"Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it—a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don’t grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day’s walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to the very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering as to the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois."

 

Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Ch. 14

[KRG]

"Why did you do all this for me?" he asked. "I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you." "You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die... By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heavens knows anyone's life can stand a little of that." Charlotte's Web by E.B. White 1952

[unsinkable]

:crying:

 

"Why did you do all this for me?" he asked. "I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you." "You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die... By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heavens knows anyone's life can stand a little of that." Charlotte's Web by E.B. White 1952

[Rivka]

Here's a passage I've always liked. I first encountered it as a freshman in college, via some friends who had a tradition of always reading it aloud at the first snowfall.

 

 

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

- James Joyce, "The Dead"

[elegantlion]

“As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity. / The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning. / So one generation of men will grow while another dies.â€

 

Homer The Iliad (Lattimore translation) I don't have my book here to see if that's the full line, but I love it.

[Mrs Mungo]

"Elinor agreed with it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition." - Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

 

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest;

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

 

-Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

 

Well, I sat there at the table and I acted real naive

For I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve

 

-John Prine, Spanish Pipedream

[AuntieM]

"Monsieur Cure," said the man, "you are good; you don't despise me. You take me into your house; you light your candles for me, and I hav'n't hid from you where I come from, and how miserable I am."

 

The bishop, who was sitting near him, touched his hand gently and said: "You need not tell me who you are. This is not my house; it is the house of Christ. It does not ask any comer whether he has a name, but whether he has an affliction. You are suffering; you are hungry and thirsty; be welcome. And do not thank me; do not tell me that I take you into my house. This is the home of no man, except him who needs an asylum. I tell you, who are a traveller, that you are more at home here than I; whatever is here is yours. What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me, I knew it."

 

The man opened his eyes in astonishment:

"Really? You knew my name?"

 

"Yes," answered the bishop. "Your name is my brother."

 

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables. This passage is *much* better nestled into its context, candlesticks and all.

 

And a nod to Melville, from Chapter 1 of Moby Dick:

 

But look! Here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land...

 

 

 

[Lady Florida.]

"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."

 

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

[Lady Florida.]

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

 

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

[FriedClams]

In the great green room there was a telephone....

 

;)

[Parrothead]

His head was swimming, and he was far from certain even of the direction they had been going in when he had his fall.

He guessed as well as he could, and crawled along for a good way,

till suddenly his hand met what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel.

It was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it.

He put the ring in his pocket almost without thinking: certainly it did not seem of any particular use at the moment.

He did not go much further, but sat down on the cold floor and gave himself up to complete miserableness.

 

- Tolkin

[aggieamy]

Starting from this point of view, it will always remain in my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of of the Mother of us all.

 

Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

[Mrs Mungo]

"Excuse me, I said. I thought you were a trout stream.

I'm not, she said."-Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

[Lady Florida.]

 

Well, I sat there at the table and I acted real naive

For I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve

 

-John Prine, Spanish Pipedream

 

Oh, I love John Prine! Now I'll be singing the Barbara Lewis chorus in my head. And Dear Abby.

[Mrs Mungo]

Oh, I love John Prine! Now I'll be singing the Barbara Lewis chorus in my head. And Dear Abby.

 

I grew up on John Prine, I love him!

 

I was a literature major. I've read loads of Great Books. I still think the line I quoted from him is one of the greatest ever written.

[MSNative]

"There seems to me to be absolutely no limit to the inanity and credulity of the human race. Homo Sapiens! Homo idioticus!"

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not.

Mary Shelley

[Angel]

In the great green room there was a telephone....

 

;)

 

And a red balloon...

[Belacqua]

The execution was set for the 29th of March at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly, and impersonally, in the manner or planets or vegetables. (J. Borges)

[The Governess]

"Far above the Ephel Duath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

 

The Return of the King, Tolkien

[Slartibartfast]

"But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them."

~Tolkien

 

Coming from someone who lost all but one of his close friends in WWI it really is a punch in the gut

Edited August 2, 2011 by Sis

[dcjlkplus3]

"Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them," exclaimed Anne. "You mayn't get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. Mrs. Lynde says, 'Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.' But I think it wuld be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed."

 

Anne of Green Gables

[The Governess]

A new favorite:

 

"It may be laid down as a general rule that if a man begins to sing, no one will take any notice of his song except his fellow human beings. This is true even if his song is surpassingly beautiful. Other men may be in raptures at his skill, but the rest of creation is, by and large, unmoved. Perhaps a cat or a dog may look at him; his horse, if it is an exceptionally intelligent beast, may pause in cropping the grass, but that is the extent of it. But when the fairy sang, the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy's song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself."

 

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

[LibraryLover]

Willa Cather and Carson McCullers came to mind for me. Freakishly, I can't find any of their books on any of my bookshelves.

 

That is bothering me.

[unsinkable]

I'll add this from As You Like It (because I saw a production this week :D)

 

"All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts..."

 

The man who played Jaques was perfect in his role.

[JenniferB]

Bill,

 

The Greatest Sentence Game reminded me of this skit by Brian Regan. Please forgive the 28 second commercial preceding the skit. Just wait, it's worth it. :D

[Ester Maria]

Well, here is something for you, Bill:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Found a family, build a state,

The pledged event is still the same:

Matter in end will never abate

His ancient brutal claim.

 

Indolence is heaven's ally here,

And energy the child of hell:

The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear

But brims the poisoned well.

[mooooom]

I'm surrounded by circus people. We aren't tightrope walkers or acrobats. We don't breathe fire or swallow swords. We're gypsies, moving wherever there's work to be found. Our scrapbooks and photo albums bear witness to our vagabond lives: college years, grad-school years, instructor-mill years, first-job years. In between each stage is a picture of old friends helping to fill a truck with boxes and furniture. We pitch our tents, and the place becomes home for a while. We make families from colleagues and students, lovers and neighbors. And when that place is no longer working, we don't just make do. We move on to the place that's next. No place is home. Every place is home. Home is our stuff. As much as I love the Cumberland Valley at twilight, I probably won't live there forever, and this doesn't really scare me. That's how I know I'm circus people.

 

Cathy Day

"The Circus in Winter"

[Spy Car]

At the college where I teach, I'm surrounded by circus people. We aren't tightrope walkers or acrobats. We don't breathe fire or swallow swords. We're gypsies, moving wherever there's work to be found. Our scrapbooks and photo albums bear witness to our vagabond lives: college years, grad-school years, instructor-mill years, first-job years. In between each stage is a picture of old friends helping to fill a truck with boxes and furniture. We pitch our tents, and the place becomes home for a while. We make families from colleagues and students, lovers and neighbors. And when that place is no longer working, we don't just make do. We move on to the place that's next. No place is home. Every place is home. Home is our stuff. As much as I love the Cumberland Valley at twilight, I probably won't live there forever, and this doesn't really scare me. That's how I know I'm circus people.

 

Cathy Day

"The Circus in Winter"

 

Makes me want to read more.

 

Bill

Edited August 2, 2011 by Spy Car

[pqr]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

 

followed several hundred pages later by....

 

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

[pqr]

Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropped down,

'Twas sad as sad could be;

And we did speak only to break

The silence of the sea!

 

All in a hot and copper sky,

The bloody sun, at noon,

Right up above the mast did stand,

No bigger than the moon.

 

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

 

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

 

The very deep did rot: O Christ!

That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

Upon the slimy sea

[Guest]

Just one???? Dd and I have been keeping quote books for several months now...

 

Here's one from Lapsing, by Jill Paton Walsh:

"Tessa's room was full of shimmering nets of gold, all over the walls and ceiling and the glossy brown scumbled door, and even on Tessa's hands and face, reticulated glory like the wings of Michael, the scales of Lucifer in a holy picture. She remembered with visionary clarity the beauty in the room, and the crumpled, heavy feel of being dressed in bed."

 

And now for something completely different, from Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett, during a discussion of poetry:

"All her clothes might fall off. I am sorry about this, but it seems to be a by-product of the whole business of poetry."

 

Same author, same book: "There was a scuffle at the back of the crowd as a number of people, metaphorically speaking, were a long way away and knew nothing about it."

 

Dd asked me to include as her contribution this, from the book version of Yes, Minister:

"I must protest in the strongest possible terms my profound opposition to the newly instituted practice which imposes severe and intolerable restrictions on the ingress and egress of senior members of of the hierarchy and will, in all probability, should the current deplorable innovation be perpetuated, precipitate a progressive constriction of the channels of communication, culminating in a condition of organizational atrophy and administrative paralysis, which will render effectively impossible the coherent and co-ordinated discharge of the functions of government within Her Majesty's kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland."

 

"You mean you've lost your key?"

[Lady Florida.]

Willa Cather

 

She used language beautifully.

[Kalmia]

SpyCar, I LOVE THIS THREAD!

 

But I must admit, my quote is a bit of a cheat. It is not of literature, but of art, and not of the canon, but of the most intimate of communication, letters.

 

"If you were with me we could tramp the wild places all day and night and be alone together again: and sit by the sea in the night wind; and watch the moon lay a silver carpet over the ocean. We could slip over the velvet covered rocks down at the Sea's brink and watch the waves reach for us, and you could laugh at me for being timid and afraid of those crystal green bands which are so clean and cold... And everything I spoke to you would be about Love and beauty and love again and the greatness of this nature which is in us. We two and the great sea and the mighty rocks greater than the sea, and we two greater than the rocks and the sea. Four eternities."

 

--Artist, George Bellows, letter to his wife, Emma

[AuntieM]

I'm surrounded by circus people. We aren't tightrope walkers or acrobats. We don't breathe fire or swallow swords. We're gypsies, moving wherever there's work to be found. Our scrapbooks and photo albums bear witness to our vagabond lives: college years, grad-school years, instructor-mill years, first-job years. In between each stage is a picture of old friends helping to fill a truck with boxes and furniture. We pitch our tents, and the place becomes home for a while. We make families from colleagues and students, lovers and neighbors. And when that place is no longer working, we don't just make do. We move on to the place that's next. No place is home. Every place is home. Home is our stuff. As much as I love the Cumberland Valley at twilight, I probably won't live there forever, and this doesn't really scare me. That's how I know I'm circus people.

 

Cathy Day

"The Circus in Winter"

 

Gah! Sounds like my life! Putting this on my to-read list.

 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

 

followed several hundred pages later by....

 

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

 

I'm kind of surprised this didn't come up before page four. What a story.

 

SpyCar, I LOVE THIS THREAD!

 

But I must admit, my quote is a bit of a cheat. It is not of literature, but of art, and not of the canon, but of the most intimate of communication, letters.

 

"If you were with me we could tramp the wild places all day and night and be alone together again: and sit by the sea in the night wind; and watch the moon lay a silver carpet over the ocean. We could slip over the velvet covered rocks down at the Sea's brink and watch the waves reach for us, and you could laugh at me for being timid and afraid of those crystal green bands which are so clean and cold... And everything I spoke to you would be about Love and beauty and love again and the greatness of this nature which is in us. We two and the great sea and the mighty rocks greater than the sea, and we two greater than the rocks and the sea. Four eternities."

 

--Artist, George Bellows, letter to his wife, Emma

 

What is the title of the book that contains this correspondence? Is there a book? I'd love to read it all. That is one powerful letter. <<Where is the "swoon" smilie? Can't find the swoon smilie...>>

[leeannpal]

"It happens the world over - we love ourselves more than we do the one we say we love. We all want to be Number One, we've got to be Number One or nothing! We can't see that we could make ourselves loved and needed in the Number Two, or Three, or Four spot. No sir, we've got to be Number One, and if we can't make it, we'll rip and tear at the loved one till we've ruined every smidgin of love that was ever there."

— Irene Hunt (Up a Road Slowly)

 

This is one of my favorite books of all time. Everyone seems to know about Across Five Aprils, but this is by far her best book to me.

 

I know it isn't one sentence, but it is one thought.

Edited August 3, 2011 by leeannpal

[Wildiris]

I always mis-remember this line from Faulkner. I think it should be...dusty shelves of certitute long divorced from reality....

 

“She looked like a librarian. Something among dusty shelves of ordered certitudes long divorced from reality, desiccating peacefully, as if a breath of that air which sees injustice done.â€

 

The Sound and the Fury

[Spy Car]

SpyCar, I LOVE THIS THREAD!

 

But I must admit, my quote is a bit of a cheat. It is not of literature, but of art, and not of the canon, but of the most intimate of communication, letters.

 

"If you were with me we could tramp the wild places all day and night and be alone together again: and sit by the sea in the night wind; and watch the moon lay a silver carpet over the ocean. We could slip over the velvet covered rocks down at the Sea's brink and watch the waves reach for us, and you could laugh at me for being timid and afraid of those crystal green bands which are so clean and cold... And everything I spoke to you would be about Love and beauty and love again and the greatness of this nature which is in us. We two and the great sea and the mighty rocks greater than the sea, and we two greater than the rocks and the sea. Four eternities."

 

--Artist, George Bellows, letter to his wife, Emma

 

Perfectly lovely! :001_smile:

 

Bill

[Kalmia]

AuntieM,

 

It was just the Bellows quote not the entire letter in a coffee table art book:

The Art of Monhegan Island by Arnold Skolnick and Carl Little

[Joyofsixreboot]

Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.

Willa Cather, My Antonia

I read this over and over when I was 15.

 

 

"I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 3

 

 

" Last night I dreamt I Went to Manderley again."

Daphne DuMaurier. Rebecca

 

So many more....these just came to mind first.

Edited August 3, 2011 by joyofsix

[Maria from IN]

"As the clock speaks everyone's native language in

whatever land it may strike the hour, so church bells are never

foreign if our hearts but listen."

 

--Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge