S/o The Greatest Sentences in Literature Game

[AuntieM]

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

 

Thanks, I'll look for that book and more info on Bellows.

[Stacia]

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

 

Love it! I've always meant to read that book. I really have to now...

[OrdinaryTime]

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound, but you couldn't get those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it; especially on a Saturday afternoon in the summer.

 

- "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith

[Miss Marple]

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

 

 

 

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams

 

I love this! Some of my favorite quotes are from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I just opened this thread and it's already bedtime. I'll be back in the morning with some of my favorites.

[veggiegal]

Keeping with the Hitchhiker's theme: "I never could get the hang of Thursdays." :tongue_smilie:

 

Some of my favourite opening lines of poetry, from Dylan Thomas' Fern Hill:

 

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs,

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green...

[Stacia]

 

 

"Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever."

 

 

 

-- from Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

 

[Beth in SW WA]

Nelly, I am Heathcliff! (WH)

[Amy in TX]

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

Not untwist--slack they may be--these last strands of man

In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

 

--The opening lines of (Carrion Comfort) by Gerard Manley Hopkins

[Maverick_Mom]

"My mother is a fish." (As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner)

[Joker]

"Anne always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night. It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it."

 

Anne of Green Gables

 

I recently read Anne aloud to my girls and this jumped out at me because of things that have happened. It's stuck with me.

[Sugarfoot]

Out, out brief candle.

Life is but a walking shadow.

A poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot;

Full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

 

Shakespeare's Macbeth, one of my all-time quotable favorites

[Laura in CA]

Anything by E. M. Forster! A few passages from Howards End:

 

Ch. III:

 

Her own fortune was invested in Home Rails, and most ardently did she beg her niece to imitate her. 'Then we should be together, dear.' Margaret, out of politeness, invested a few hundreds in the Nottingham and Derby Railway, and though the Foreign Things did admirably and the Nottingham and Derby declined with the steady dignity of which only Home Rails are capable, Mrs Munt never ceased to rejoice, and to say: 'I did manage that, at all events. When the smash comes poor Margaret will have a nest-egg to fall back upon.'

 

Ch. IV:

 

Mrs. Munt soon recovered. She possessed to a remarkable degree the power of distorting the past, and before many days were over she had forgotten the part played by her own imprudence in the catastrophe. Even at the crisis she had cried, 'Thank goodness, poor Margaret is saved this!' which during the journey to London evolved into 'It had to be gone through by someone,' which in its turn ripened into the permanent form of 'The one time I really did help Emily's girls was over the Wilcox business.'

 

Ch. XXIII:

 

'The motor's come to stay,' he answered. 'One must get about. There's a pretty church -- oh, you aren't sharp enough. Well, look out, if the road worries you -- right outward at the scenery.'

 

She looked at the scenery. It heaved and merged like porridge. Presently it congealed. They had arrived.

 

------------------------------------------------------------

 

OK, I'll stop now ...:D

Great thread!!!

Edited August 3, 2011 by Laura in CA

[tntgoodwin]

"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live."

 

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

[scrappyhappymama]

"He bought a little lady-size spitting pot for Janie to spit in. Had it right in the parlor with little sprigs of flowers painted all around the sides. It took people by surprise because most of the women dipped snuff and of course had a spit-cup in the house. But how could they know up-to-date folks was spitting in flowery little things like that? It sort of made the rest of them feel like they had been taken advantage of. Like things had been kept from them. Maybe more things in the world besides spitting pots had been hid from them, when they wasn't told no better than to spit in tomato cans. It was bad enough for white people, but when one of your own color could be so different it put you on a wonder. It was like seeing your sister turn into a 'gator. A familiar strangeness. You keep seeing your sister in the 'gator and the 'gator in your sister, and you'd rather not."

 

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

 

 

“Indeed the safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

 

The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

Edited August 3, 2011 by scrappyhappymama

[OnTheBrink]

'Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of oh, your father... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.'

 

Miss Maudie Atkinson, To Kill A Mockingbird

[ElaineJ]

.....All that exists

Matters to man; he minds what happens

And feels he is at fault, a fallen soul

With power to place, to explain every

What in his world but why he is neither

God nor good, this guilt the insoluble

Final fact, infusing his private

Nexus of needs,his noted aims with

Incomprehensible comprehensive dread

At not being what he knows that before

This world was he was willed to become.

 

from The Age of Anxiety by W.H. Auden

 

 

Elaine

[Laura Corin]

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

 

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)

"He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven"

from the Collected Works of W.B. Yeats

 

Laura

[Onceuponatime]

"A friend is someone with whom you may think aloud." Emerson

 

"Me boy." said McGillicuddy, "we'll get nowhere at all by stressing the obvious. It's a mistake that the whole world has fallen into of late. Somebody says something that's so obvious it's painful, and the whole of Christendom rises to its fee and applauds. It's the things that aren't obvious that we need to be looking for. To bring the matter to a point where it's worth arguing about-- it's an obvious thing that being a leprechaun I'm a talented liar, isn't it?"

 

Leonard Wibberly (an under rated philosopher) in McGillicuddy McGotham.

 

All philosophers should have a sense of humor.

[Classical Country Mama]

Ahhhhh.... at last! a chance to share one of my favorite passages anywhere!!! From Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy. Er, not the cheeriest of passages. But so very... striking.

 

 

And exactly at the moment when the space between the wheels drew level with her, she threw aside the red bag and, drawing her head down between her shoulders, dropped on her hands under the truck, and with a light movement, as though she would rise again at once, sank on to her knees. At that same instant she became horror-struck at what she was doing. 'Where am I? What am I doing? Why?' She tried to get up, to throw herself back; but something huge and relentless struck her on the head and dragged her down on her back. 'God forgive me everything!' she murmured, feeling the impossibility of struggling.

 

A little peasant muttering something was working at the rails. And the candle by which she had been reading the book filled with trouble and deceit, sorrow and evil, flared up with a brighter light, illuminating for her everything that before had been enshrouded in darkness, flickered, grew dim and went out forever.

[Classical Country Mama]

May I please have another? Here is from The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas.

 

 

He remained there all night, not knowing where he was. When daylight dawned, he saw that he was near a stream; he was thirsty, and dragged himself towards it. As he stooped to drink, he perceived that his hair had become quite white.

[thescrappyhomeschooler]

"There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting."

 

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

 

"Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts."

 

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

 

And, although in French, this poem always delights my ears and mind when I read it. The words just sound exactly like the picture I have in my head when reading this poem.

 

"Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Et nos amours

Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne

La joie venait toujours après la peine

 

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

 

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face

Tandis que sous

Le pont de nos bras passe

Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse"

 

First two stanzas and chorus of Le pont mirabeau by Guillaume Appolinaire

Edited August 3, 2011 by thescrappyhomeschooler

[Heather in Neverland]

"Sweet Home. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if Hell was a pretty place too."

 

"Stamp looked into Paul D's eyes and the sweet conviction in them almost made him wonder if it had happened at all, eighteen years ago, that while he and Baby Suggs were looking the wrong way, a pretty little slave girl had recognized a hat, and split to the woodshed to kill her children."

 

Both from "Beloved" by Toni Morrison

[TheReader]

Jumping in, if I may.....

 

"Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore." -- Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Hurston

 

A long one from Little Men --

"Let the boys be boys, the longer the better, and let the young men sow their wild oats if they must. But mothers, sisters, and friends may help to make the crop a small one, and keep many tares from spoiling the harvest, by believing, and showing that they believe, in the possibility of loyalty to the virtues which make men manliest in good women's eyes. If it is a feminine delusion, leave us to enjoy it while we may, for without it half the beauty and the romance of life is lost, and sorrowful forebodings would embitter all our hopes of the brave, tenderhearted little lads, who still love their mothers better than themselves and are not ashamed to own it." (emphasis mine....)

 

Another, from the same work, Little Men, by Louisa May Alcott (as a mom to boys, this is the book I try to use as a guiding light.....I too often fall short, but re-read it annually at least to remind myself what kind of mom I'd like to be.....) --

 

"She was very anxious to make a success of her 'firebrand' because others predicted failure; but having learned that people cannot be moulded like clay, she contented herself with the hope that this neglected boy might become a good man, and asked no more."

 

And some from The Little Prince, Antoine de Sainte Exupery --

 

"They are like that. One must not hold it against them. Children should always show great forbearance towards grown-up people."

 

and

 

"I should have liked to begin this story in the fashion of the fairy-tales. I should have liked to say: 'Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet that was scarcely any bigger than himself, and who had need of a sheep....' To those who understand life, that would have given a much greater air of truth to my story."

 

and

 

"I did not know what to say to him. I felt awkward and blundering. I did not know how I could reach him, where I could overtake him and go on hand in hand with him once more. It is such a secret place, the land of tears."

 

And then the saddest most beautiful goodbye in all of literature, from The House at Pooh Corner, AA Milne:

 

"Pooh, when I'm - you know - when I'm not doing Nothing, will you come up here sometimes?

 

Just Me?

 

Yes, Pooh.

 

Will you be here too?

 

Yes, Pooh, I will be, really. I promise I will be, Pooh.

 

That's good, said Pooh.

 

(break)

 

Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt for Pooh's paw. "Pooh, said Christopher Robin earnestly, 'if I - if I'm not quite --- ' he stopped and tried again --- 'Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't you?'

 

(break)

 

So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing."

 

There are so many more, I could go on, but I think I've exceeded the "sentence or two" suggestion......

[Classical Country Mama]

"Hey, Boo," I said.

 

This one kills me every time I read it. Awesome.

[lionfamily1999]

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.

:iagree:

 

"She's worth her weight in gold," says the trooper.

 

"In gold?" says Mr. Bagnet. "I'll tell you what. The old girl's weight is twelve stone six. Would I take that weight in any metal for the old girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl's metal is far more precious than the preciousest metal. And she's ALL metal!"

 

~Bleak House

 

I know it's not the most beautiful language, but I love the way Bagnet describes his wife...

 

"Think as high of the old girl as the rock of Gibraltar and still you'll be thinking low of such merits."

 

 

-------------------- Another Bleak House quote...

 

"As all partings foreshadow the great final one, so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper what your rooms and what mine must one day be."

[LostSurprise]

"How fleeting are all human passions compared to the massive continuity of ducks."~Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night

 

"Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is--

Christ--for Christ plays in ten thousand places

lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his..." Gerard Manley Hopkins, "As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame"

 

"If ever a man's wife was his nemesis, his antagonist, his antithesis, Ma is H2O's. In those rarified circles of purist anglers among whom Henning Hale-Orviston is considered the last word on fishing, Ma Orviston is considered the last laugh--for though she never published a word on fishing, and though H2O has struggled to keep her existence under wraps, Ma has, through the medium of fish-gossip, attained to an infamy rivalling H2O's fame. The reason? O Heresy! Lower than Low Church, lower than pariah, lower than poacher, predator or polluter, Ma is the Flyfisherman's Antipode: she is a bait fisherman. A fundamentalist. A plunker of worms."~David James Duncan, The River Why

[scrappyhappymama]

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

Robert Frost

 

I tried, and failed, to pick only one of the four sentences. :)

[Forget-Me-Not]

I'm going to 'cheat' and post one from a letter too:

 

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me—perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar—that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.

Written by Maj. Sullivan Ballou to his wife a week before he was killed in the Battle of Bull Run.

 

 

Full Text

Edited August 4, 2011 by LemonPie

[Marylou]

"But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart." I Samuel 16:7 KJV

[readinmom]

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Scout, To Kill a Mockingbird

[swimmermom3]

Not from a classic:

 

First the colors.

Then the humans.

That's usually how I see things.

Or at least, how I try.

 

****HERE IS A SMALL FACT****

You are going to die.

 

I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please, trust me. I most definitely can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's. Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

 

****REACTION TO THE *****

AFOREMENTIONED FACT

 

Does this worry you?

I urge you-don't be afraid.

I am nothing if not fair.

 

-Of course, an introduction.

A beginning.

Where are my manners?

 

I could introduce myself properly, but it's not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms.A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.

 

from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

[Mrs Mungo]

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

Robert Frost

 

I tried, and failed, to pick only one of the four sentences. :)

 

The last one is the most important. That's the one that gives you the key to the puzzle that is this poem; that is the one that clues you into the irony.

[Fairlight]

Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky-way. Remembering what it was--what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light--I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe; he was God's, and by God would he be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long in sleep forgot sorrow.

 

from Jane Eyre

[MIch elle]

"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations."

 

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."

 

H.D. Thoreau, Walden

[The Governess]

Not from a classic:

 

First the colors.

Then the humans.

That's usually how I see things.

Or at least, how I try.

 

****HERE IS A SMALL FACT****

You are going to die.

 

I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please, trust me. I most definitely can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's. Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

 

****REACTION TO THE *****

AFOREMENTIONED FACT

 

Does this worry you?

I urge you-don't be afraid.

I am nothing if not fair.

 

-Of course, an introduction.

A beginning.

Where are my manners?

 

I could introduce myself properly, but it's not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms.A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.

 

from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

 

I LOVE this book. Sobbed like a baby the first time I read it. He sure has a way with words.

[The Governess]

Love it! I've always meant to read that book. I really have to now...

 

It is such a great book - beautiful prose, witty humor, and some intriguing mythology. I am going to be giving out copies for Christmas this year. :001_smile:

[swimmermom3]

 

"Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever."

 

 

 

-- from Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

 

 

I love this! I have not read the book and am in need of a read that has NOTHING to do with school.

 

Bill, thank you for starting this thread. It is a difficult, transitional time in our schooling right now. Thank you for reminding me why I am doing what I am doing. Passion. Pure and simple.

[scrappyhappymama]

The last one is the most important. That's the one that gives you the key to the puzzle that is this poem; that is the one that clues you into the irony.

 

True. And I almost posted just that. But then, what about the first stanza with probably the most elegant turn of phrase:

 

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood"

 

Or the second with its debate between the well traveled road or the intriguing unkempt side. Or the third with its hopeful optimism: "Oh, I marked the first for another day!" and its wistful acknowledgment: "Yet knowing how way leads on to way"

 

It's all good. :001_smile:

[Stacia]

I LOVE this book. Sobbed like a baby the first time I read it. He sure has a way with words.

 

Me too -- bawled & bawled. Loved that the book was narrated by Death. (Also loved the Terry Pratchett quote earlier in the thread; he's another great author who does Death as a fabulous character.)

 

It is such a great book - beautiful prose, witty humor, and some intriguing mythology. I am going to be giving out copies for Christmas this year. :001_smile:

 

I need to read this book!

 

I love this! I have not read the book and am in need of a read that has NOTHING to do with school.

 

Bill, thank you for starting this thread. It is a difficult, transitional time in our schooling right now. Thank you for reminding me why I am doing what I am doing. Passion. Pure and simple.

 

I loved Middlesex. Cal/Callie (the narrator) is just wonderful at telling the story. Eugenides is a very talented author, imo. I think you would really enjoy reading Middlesex.

 

Bill, thanks from me too!

[nmoira]

I couldn't edit this down:

 

 

 

Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror--indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy--but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend. and saw him at his side cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew.

 

 

 

Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fulness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.

 

 

 

'Rat!' he found breath to whisper, shaking. 'Are you afraid?'

 

 

 

'Afraid?' murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. 'Afraid! Of him? O, never, never! And yet--and yet-- O, Mole, I am afraid!'

 

 

 

Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.

 

 

 

Sudden and magnificent, the sun's broad golden disc showed itself over the horizon facing them; and the first rays, shooting across the level water-meadows, took the animals full in the eyes and dazzled them. When they were able to look once more, the Vision had vanished, and the air was full of the carol of birds that hailed the dawn.

 

 

From The Wind in the Willows

[Spy Car]

I see the MCT readers arrived.

 

Bill

[nmoira]

I see the MCT readers arrived.

 

Bill

They have, but this passage is a longstanding favourite.

[Belacqua]

I'm standing here on Deck 12 looking at a Dreamward that I bet has cold water that'd turn your knuckles blue, and, like Frank Conroy, part of me realizes that I haven't washed a dish or tapped my foot in line behind somebody with multiple coupons at a supermarket checkout in a week; and yet instead of feeling refreshed and renewed I'm anticipating just how totally stressful and demanding and unpleasurable regular landlocked adult life is going to be now that even just the premature removal of a towel by a sepulchral crewman seems like an assault on my basic rights, and plus now the sluggishness of the Aft elevator is an outrage, and the absence of 22.5-lb dumbbells in the Olympic Health Club's dumbbell rack is a personal affront.

 

David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

[The Governess]

I couldn't edit this down:

 

 

 

Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror--indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy--but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend. and saw him at his side cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew.

 

 

 

Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fulness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.

 

 

 

'Rat!' he found breath to whisper, shaking. 'Are you afraid?'

 

 

 

'Afraid?' murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. 'Afraid! Of him? O, never, never! And yet--and yet-- O, Mole, I am afraid!'

 

 

 

Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.

 

 

 

Sudden and magnificent, the sun's broad golden disc showed itself over the horizon facing them; and the first rays, shooting across the level water-meadows, took the animals full in the eyes and dazzled them. When they were able to look once more, the Vision had vanished, and the air was full of the carol of birds that hailed the dawn.

 

 

From The Wind in the Willows

 

This is our current read-aloud. I just read this passage to my wide-eyed girls a few nights ago. :001_smile:

[Audrey]

It was Bataille. On leaving the pit-eye he had wildly galloped along the dark galleries. He seemed to know his road in this subterranean town which he had inhabited for eleven years, and his eyes saw clearly in the depths of the eternal night in which he had lived. He galloped on and on, bending his head, drawing up his feet, passing through these narrow tubes in the earth, filled by his great body. Road succeeded to road,. and the forked turnings were passed without any hesitation. Where was he going? Over there, perhaps, towards that vision of his youth, to the mill where he had been born on the bank of the Scarpe, to the confused recollection of the sun burning in the air like a great lamp. He desired to live, his beast's memory awoke; the longing to breathe once more the air of the plains drove him straight onwards to the discovery of that hole, the exit beneath the warm sun into light. Rebellion carried away his ancient resignation; this pit was murdering him after having blinded him. The water which pursued him was lashing him on the flanks and biting him on the crupper. But as he went deeper in, the galleries became narrower, the roofs lower, and the walls protruded. He galloped on in spite of everything, grazing himself, leaving shreds of his limbs on the timber. From every side the mine seemed to be pressing on to him to take him and to stifle him.

 

Then Étienne and Catherine, as he came near them, perceived that he was strangling between the rocks. He had stumbled and broken his two front legs. With a last effort, he dragged himself a few metres, but his flanks could not pass; he remained hemmed in and garrotted by the earth. With his bleeding head stretched out, he still sought for some crack with his great troubled eyes.

 

The water was rapidly covering him; he began to neigh with that terrible prolonged death-rattle with which the other horses had already died in the stable. It was a sight of fearful agony, this old beast shattered and motionless, struggling at this depth, far from the daylight. The flood was drowning his mane, and his cry of distress never ceased; he uttered it more hoarsely, with his large open mouth stretched out. There was a last rumble, the hollow sound of a cask which is being filled; then deep silence fell.

 

 

From Germinal by Émile Zola.

[Audrey]

Oh, and if you want only a single sentence, then I think this is the most intricately crafted sentence ever written -- IMO a true piece of genius.

 

Their honour precarious, their liberty provisional, lasting only until the discovery of their crime; their position unstable, like that of the poet who one day was feasted at every table, applauded in every theatre in London, and on the next was driven from every lodging, unable to find a pillow upon which to lay his head, turning the mill like Samson and saying like him: "The two sexes shall die, each in a place apart!"; excluded even, save on the days of general disaster when the majority rally round the victim as the Jews rallied round Dreyfus, from the sympathy--at times from the society--of their fellows, in whom they inspire only disgust at seeing themselves as they are, portrayed in a mirror which, ceasing to flatter them, accentuates every blemish that they have refused to observe in themselves, and makes them understand that what they have been calling their love (a thing to which, playing upon the word, they have by association annexed all that poetry, painting, music, chivalry, asceticism have contrived to add to love) springs not from an ideal of beauty which they have chosen but from an incurable malady; like the Jews again (save some who will associate only with others of their race and have always on their lips ritual words and consecrated pleasantries), shunning one another, seeking out those who are most directly their opposite, who do not desire their company, pardoning their rebuffs, moved to ecstasy by their condescension; but also brought into the company of their own kind by the ostracism that strikes them, the opprobrium under which they have fallen, having finally been invested, by a persecution similar to that of Israel, with the physical and moral characteristics of a race, sometimes beautiful, often hideous, finding (in spite of all the mockery with which he who, more closely blended with, better assimilated to the opposing race, is relatively, in appearance, the least inverted, heaps upon him who has remained more so) a relief in frequenting the society of their kind, and even some corroboration of their own life, so much so that, while steadfastly denying that they are a race (the name of which is the vilest of insults), those who succeed in concealing the fact that they belong to it they readily unmask, with a view less to injuring them, though they have no scruple about that, than to excusing themselves; and, going in search (as a doctor seeks cases of appendicitis) of cases of inversion in history, taking pleasure in recalling that Socrates was one of themselves, as the Israelites claim that Jesus was one of them, without reflecting that there were no abnormals when homosexuality was the norm, no anti-Christians before Christ, that the disgrace alone makes the crime because it has allowed to survive only those who remained obdurate to every warning, to every example, to every punishment, by virtue of an innate disposition so peculiar that it is more repugnant to other men (even though it may be accompanied by exalted moral qualities) than certain other vices which exclude those qualities, such as theft, cruelty, breach of faith, vices better understood and so more readily excused by the generality of men; forming a freemasonry far more extensive, more powerful and less suspected than that of the Lodges, for it rests upon an identity of tastes, needs, habits, dangers, apprenticeship, knowledge, traffic, glossary, and one in which the members themselves, who intend not to know one another, recognise one another immediately by natural or conventional, involuntary or deliberate signs which indicate one of his congeners to the beggar in the street, in the great nobleman whose carriage door he is shutting, to the father in the suitor for his daughter's hand, to him who has sought healing, absolution, defence, in the doctor, the priest, the barrister to whom he has had recourse; all of them obliged to protect their own secret but having their part in a secret shared with the others, which the rest of humanity does not suspect and which means that to them the most wildly improbable tales of adventure seem true, for in this romantic, anachronistic life the ambassador is a bosom friend of the felon, the prince, with a certain independence of action with which his aristocratic breeding has furnished him, and which the trembling little cit would lack, on leaving the duchess's party goes off to confer in private with the hooligan; a reprobate part of the human whole, but an important part, suspected where it does not exist, flaunting itself, insolent and unpunished, where its existence is never guessed; numbering its adherents everywhere, among the people, in the army, in the church, in the prison, on the throne; living, in short, at least to a great extent, in a playful and perilous intimacy with the men of the other race, provoking them, playing with them by speaking of its vice as of something alien to it; a game that is rendered easy by the blindness or duplicity of the others, a game that may be kept up for years until the day of the scandal, on which these lion-tamers are devoured; until then, obliged to make a secret of their lives, to turn away their eyes from the things on which they would naturally fasten them, to fasten them upon those from which they would naturally turn away, to change the gender of many of the words in their vocabulary, a social constraint, slight in comparison with the inward constraint which their vice, or what is improperly so called, imposes upon them with regard not so much now to others as to themselves, and in such a way that to themselves it does not appear a vice.

 

From Vol. 4 (Sodom and Gomorrah) of Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust.

[Guest Rosslyn Elliott]

Great thread! I can't choose a favorite, but for a great one, I am going to pick:

 

Man is inherently ungrateful. In fact, the best definition of man is: a biped, ungrateful.

 

Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

[amey311]

I probably read too much brain candy to be a part of this, but I'm joining in anyway.

 

"Stop," I said. "Please do not further endorken yourself to me. You have great hair and a car that is most fly, and you have just saved me with your mad ninja driving skills, so do not sully your heroic hottie image in my mind by further reciting your nerdy scholastic agenda. Don't tell me what you're studying, Steve, tell me what's in your soul. What haunts you?"

And he was like, "Dude, you need to cut back on the caffeine."

— Christopher Moore (You Suck)

 

I really liked her character (most of her other great lines involve swearing, so I'll stick with this one I don't have to edit).

[AnthemLights]

"But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart." I Samuel 16:7 KJV

 

 

The Bible contains some of the most beautiful language in all of literature. I had such a hard time deciding on one verse or passage. The following is probably not the best choice, but it is one of my favorites.

 

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

[AnthemLights]

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.

 

:iagree: One of the best books ever.