June 2011
13 posts
1 tag
“The thing about God … is that He usually does help, but not until...”
– From The Summer Book (1972) by Tove Jansson, chapter “The Enormous Plastic Sausage,” (page 118 in NYRB edition, translated by Thomas Teal)
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“It is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is most...”
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea (1955), chapter 7: A Few Shells
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“It is only framed in space the beauty blooms. … A note in music gains...”
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift From the Sea (1955), Chapter 7: A Few Shells
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“[The web of marriage] is made of loyalties, and interdependencies, and shared...”
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift From the Sea (1955), Chapter5: Oyster Bed
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“Only when one is connected to one’s own core is one connected to others.”
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea (1955), Chapter 3: Moon Shell
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“Instead of planting our solitude with our own dream blossoms, we choke the space...”
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea (1955), chapter 3: Moon Shell
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“So much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my...”
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea (1955), chapter 2: Channelled Whelk
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“The compensation of growing old … was simply this; that the passions...”
– Peter Walsh’s thoughts, in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, page 79 (Harcourt 1981 edition)
2 tags
“You can take anything. No matter how good you treat it — it wants to be...”
– Tom Robinson, former slave. Quoted in Julius Lester’s To Be a Slave (1968), page 138
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“Life is dear to every living thing; the worm that crawls upon the group will...”
– Solomon Northup, former slave. Quoted in Julius Lester’s To Be a Slave (1968), page 128
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“There is nothing magical in [physical books] at all. The magic is only in what...”
– Professor Faber to Guy Montag in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953), part 2, page 82.
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“In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot...”
– C.S. Lewis, Book One of Mere Christianity (1952), Chapter 5 (page 32)
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“Never pass up new experiences, Scarlett. They enrich the mind.”
– Rhett Butler to Scarlett O’Hara, Gone with the Wind (1939) by Margaret Mitchell
May 2011
31 posts
1 tag
“Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. … Do any...”
– Emily, in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (1938), Act III
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“People are meant to go through life two by two. ‘Tain’t natural to...”
– Mrs. Gibbs, in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (1938), Act II
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“You’ve got to love life to have life, and you’ve got to have life to...”
– Stage Manager, in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (1938), Act II
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“We’re all hunting like everybody else for a way the diligent and sensible...”
– Mr. Web in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (1938), Act I
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“Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a...”
– “The Ugly Duckling,” by Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), quotes from 2007 Barnes and Noble Edition of The Complete Tales and Stories, page 219
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“Most people are [nice], Scout, when you finally see them.”
– Atticus to Scout Finch, in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Chapter 31.
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“He’s the same in the courtroom as he is on the public streets.”
– Scout Finch, about her father Atticus Finch, in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), chapter 19.
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“[Courage is] when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin...”
– Atticus Finch, in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), chapter 11
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“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”
– Miss Maudie, in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), chapter 10
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“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They...”
– Miss Maudie, in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), chapter 10
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“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of...”
– Atticus Finch to Scout, by Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Chapter 3
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“It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion...”
– Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, epigram to chapter 19 in The Tragedy of Puddn’head Wilson (1893)
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“No fortune can hold out against constant wastefulness.”
– Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1856), page 243 (Lydia Davis translation)
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“Vilifying those we love always detaches us from them a little. We should not...”
– Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1856), page 250 (Lydia Davis translation)
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“Progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have...”
– C.S. Lewis, Book One of Mere Christianity (1952), Chapter 4 (page 28)
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“I have been wholly in joy when I have been in pain — childbirth is the...”
– Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet (1972), page 26
2 tags
“You will find more love than you will need in a lifetime.”
– Chimamanda Adichie, Purple Hibiscus (2003), page 276
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“[B]efore all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are–or, at all...”
– A Doll’s House (1889) by Henrik Ibsen, Act III
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“Today is always here,’ said Sethe. ‘Tomorrow, never.”
– Beloved (1989) by Toni Morrison, page 74
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“There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion...”
– Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920), (Vol. 2, Chap. 2)
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“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
– Charlotte’s Web (1952) by E.B. White, page 164
2 tags
“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was...”
– Beloved (1989) by Toni Morrison, page 112
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“Nothing but a breath — a comma — separates life from life...”
– Wit by Margaret Edson (1995), page 14
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“[A] controlling power outside the universe could not show itself to us as one of...”
– C.S. Lewis, Book One of Mere Christianity (1952), Chapter 4 (page 25)
2 tags
“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
– George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), page 260
2 tags
“It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for...”
– Anne Bronte, Agnes Grey (1847), Chapter 17
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“Here the grass is still as green, the trees as full, the river as smooth as when...”
– Gustave Flaubert (author of Madame Bovary), in a letter to Louise Colet in 1845. Quoted in Flaubert and Madame Bovary by Francis Steemuller, page 66.
1 tag
“Without thunderclaps, men would have little fear of lightning.”
– Jules Verne, Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869)
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“Everything may be labeled — but everybody is not.”
– Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920), page 63
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“My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It...”
– Ayn Rand, Anthem (1937), page 95
2 tags
“If you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a...”
– Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Chapter 13 (page 169 in 1968 printing)
April 2011
32 posts
1 tag
“Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not...”
– page 17 of The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
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Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark;
For tho’ from out our...
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NOT like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor, that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied...
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GROW old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in his hand Who saith, “A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!” Poem continues here
From “Rabbi Ben Ezra” by Robert Browning
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As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them: you’ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them...
1 tag
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the...
