Favorite Book Quotes

[Linksquest]

I thought there was already a thread on this... well, anyway,

post your favorite Book Quotes!


Right now I am reading Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man which is essentially a collection of short stories. I really like this passage from the short story "Kaleidoscope."

[I]"When life is over it is like a flicker of bright film, an instant on the screen, all of its prejudices and passions condensed and illumined for an instant on space, and before you could cry out, “There was a happy day, there a bad one, there an evil face, there a good one,â€

[mitsuki lover]

It was the best of times,it was the worse of times.Dickens,A Tale of Two Cities

Marley was dead.Dickens,A Christmas Carol

You don't know about me lessen you read a book called The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer.Mark Twain,The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Of Man and War I sing...The Aeneid of Virgil

[Debitt]

Dark light is not actually an oxymoron. It's the color past ultra-violet. The technical term for it is infra-black. It can be seen quite easily under experimental conditions. To preform the experiment, simply select a healthy brick wall with a good run-up, and, lowering your head, charge.

The color that flashes in bursts behind your eyes, behind the pain, just before you die, is infra-black.

There are more. That's just the first that popped into my head. <3

[Puritan]

It's a bit long, but this passage from Lilith is one of my favorites

[quote="George MacDonald"]The sun broke through the clouds, and the rain-drops flashed and sparkled on the grass. The raven was walking over it.

"You will wet your feet!" I cried.

"And mire my beak," he answered, immediately plunging it deep in the sod, and drawing out a great wriggling red worm. He threw back his head, and tossed it in the air. It spread great wings, gorgeous in red and black, and soared aloft.

"Tut! tut!" I exclaimed]

[Technomancer]

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Pale Blue Dot

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls. Some part of our being knows this is from where we came. We long to return. These aspirations are not, I think, irreverent, although they may trouble whatever gods may be

Cosmos

The University is a Mecca to which students come with something less than perfect faith. It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies]

Knowledge is not a loose-leaf notebook of facts. Above all, it is a responsibility for the integrity of what we are, primarily of what we are as ethical creatures. You cannot possibly maintain that informed integrity if you let other people run the world for you while you yourself continue to live out of a ragbag of morals that come from past beliefs. That is really crucial today. You can see it is pointless to advise people to learn differential equations, or to do a course in electronics or in computer programming. And yet, fifty years from now, if an understanding of man’s origins, his evolution, his history, his progress, is not the commonplace of the schoolbooks, we shall not exist. The commonplace of the schoolbooks of tomorrow is the adventure of today, and that is what we are engaged in.

And I am infinitely saddened to find myself suddenly surrounded in the west by a sense of terrible loss of nerve, a retreat from knowledge into—into what? Into Zen Buddhism]

I said at the beginning that it is a lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilization. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.

Civlization

[the_lizardqueen]

*Is basing her post entirely off of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Series. Beware the spoilers, though I doubt any of this makes any degree of sense to anyone that has not read the books*

"Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now here he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the fields of prehistoric Earth."

"I went mad for a while,' said Ford, 'did me no end of good."

"I thought you must be dead...' he said simply.
'So did I for a while,' said Ford, 'and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks. I kept myself amused all that time jumping in and out of a gin and tonic.'
Arthur cleared his throat, and then did it again. 'Where,' he said 'did you...?'
'Find a gin and tonic?' said Ford brightly. 'I found a small lake that thought it was a gin and tonic, and jumped in and out of that. At least I think it thought it was a gin and tonic."

"I may,' he added with a grin that would have sent sane men scampering into the trees, 'have been imagining it."

"Number Two's eyes narrowed and became what are known in the Shouting and Killing People trade as cold slits, the idea presumably being to give your opponent the impression that you have lost your glasses or are having difficulty keeping awake. Why this is frightening is an, as yet, unresolved problem."

"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."

*Points at sig too. Thus ceases the geekiness*

[Doe Johnson]

*Is basing her post entirely off of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Series. Beware the spoilers, though I doubt any of this makes any degree of sense to anyone that has not read the books*




*Points at sig too. Thus ceases the geekiness*

I was going to do the same!

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

Not my favourite, not very good at remembering them. But I love this one.
It's exactly what an opening sentence or two should be like - engaging and mysterious. Kept me reading. Anyway it's from Bill Myer's book: Eli


Monday was an inconvenient time to die. Come to thing of it, Tuesday through Sunday weren't all that agreeable either.

[the_lizardqueen]

I was going to do the same!

Yay for fellow Hitchhiker's Guide Quoters! *high fives*

I see you even have a H2G2 quote in your sig. I'm not the only one on the CAA! Hehe, that's a good one

[Kaori]

I doubt I could choose a single favorite quote, but this one is at least very nice:

"in all human sorrows nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and [. . .] in the sight of Christ's compassion for us no sorrow is trifling" (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina 256).

[Icarus]

"So. You gethanded a holy sword by an arch-angel, told to go fight the forces of evil, and you somehow remain an atheist. Is that what you're saying?"

Sanya's scolw returned.

"Doesn't that strike you as monumentally stupid?"

Jim Butcher, Death Masks

[Linksquest]

Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery, is full of awesome quotes!

Here are a few of them:

"Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive--it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there?"

"I'm not a bit changed--not really. I'm only just pruned down and branched out. The real ME--back here--is just the same."

"Marilla, isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"

"It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it? "

"It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?"

"You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair," said Anne reproachfully. "People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is."

"And people laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?"

[Aka-chan]

(insert much H2G2 wisdom)

.........I love you.

*broke in the summer by burning through the entire series...again* And one of my other favorites:

"And," [Number Two] roared, "we interrogated a gazelle!"

He flipped his Kill-O-Zap gun smartly under his arm and marched off through the pandemonium that had now erupted throughout the ecstatic crowd. A few steps was all he managed before he was caught up and carried shoulder high for a lap of honour round the clearing.

[Technomancer]

A few more:

These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.

Humans need fantasy to be human]

English Burger Lords managed to take any American fast food virtues (the speed with which your food was delivered, for example) and carefully remove them]

If you take the small view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water-filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them. Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable than it's given credit for, it does not have a large plastic snowman at the bottom.

Good Omens

God does not play dice with the universe: He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

Good Omens

It wasn't a dark and stormy night. It should have been, but there's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is complete and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime.

Good Omens

[QtheQreater]

Quotes from Manalive by G.K. Chesterton

"Well, hang it all," said Moon, in an injured manner, "if Dr. Pym may have an old friend with ferrets, why mayn't I have an old aunt with poplars?"

"I am sure," said Mrs. Duke, bridling, with something almost like a shaky authority, "Mr. Moon may have what aunts he likes."

"We are in the presence, as Dr. Pym so truly says, of a natural force. As soon stay the cataract of the London water-works as stay the great tendency of Dr. Warner to be assassinated by somebody. Place that man in a Quakers' meeting, among the most peaceful of Christians, and he will immediately be beaten to death with sticks of chocolate. Place him among the angels of the New Jerusalem, and he will be stoned to death with precious stones. Circumstances may be beautiful and wonderful, the average may be heart-upholding, the harvester may be golden-bearded, the doctor may be secret-guessing, the cataract may be iris-leapt, the Anglo-Saxon infant may be brave-browed, but against and above all these prodigies the grand simple tendency of Dr. Warner to get murdered will still pursue its way until it happily and triumphantly succeeds at last."

[SnoringFrog]

From Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage -

For some moments, he could not flee, no more than a little fingre can commit a revolution from the hand.

At times he regarded the soldiers in an envious way. He conceived peersons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.

Again he htought that he wished he was dead. He believed that he envied a corpse.

From Brian Jacques's Mariel of Redwall

If it be rainin' then there do be water purin' from the sky.

A full barrel's not an empty 'un.

'ee can allus tell a squirrel by his tail.

Sumplace where gurt beaties doant keep crubben an' barthen us'ns'.

From Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, which book is noted in the quote.

Flesh so fine, so fine to tear, to gash the skin; skin to strip to plait, so nice to plait the strips, so nice, so red the drops that fall; blood so red, so red, so sweet; sweet screams, pretty screams, singing screams, scream your song, sing your screams.... - Machin Shin, The Eye of the World

blood so sweet, so sweet to drink the blood, the blood drips, drips, drops so red; pretty eyes, fine eyes, I have no eyes, pluck the eyes from out of your head; grind your bones, split your bones inside your flesh, suck your marrow while you scream, scream, singing scream, sing your screams.... - Machin Shin, The Great Hunt

Love is an odd thing...as odd a thing as there is. - Lan, Robert Jordan, The Great Hunt

When someone gives you a horse, sheepherder, don't complain that it isn't as fsat as you'd like. - Lan,The Great Hunt

A bird cannot teach a fish to fly, nor a fish teach a bird to swim. - Moiraine, Robert Jordan, The Great Hunt

An anchor is not demeaned by being used to hold a boat. - the Amyrlin, The Great Hunt

A man who will not die to save a woman is no man. - Rand, The Great Hunt

You break your neck, and I'll see it mended just so I can break it again. - Nyneave, The Great Hunt

Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain. - Rand, The Great Hunt

Man listened closer to calm tones than to the loudest shouts, so long as firmness and certainty accompanied the calm. - Lan, New Spring

Unskilled hands on the tiller put the boat aground when they did not capsize it. - Siuan (I think) New Spring

It's a long step from advisor to queen. - New Spring

Some wars could not be won, yet they still must be fought. - Lan, New Spring

Power often grew from others decided you already had power. - New Spring

Once was happenstance, twice might be coincidence, but thrice or more indicated the actions of your enemies. - New Spring

He was swimming in a sea of other people's expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that. - New Spring

From Yagyu Minemori's The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War

Usually people will blink when something brushes by right in front of their eyes. This is normal, and the fact that you blink your eyes does not mean that you are upset. Also, if something is swung at your eyes two or three more times to startle you, if you did not blink your eyes at all, that would actually mean you were upset. To deliberately hold back spontaneous blinking indicates a much more disturbed mind that does blinking. - Yagyu Munemori, , "The Life-giving Sword"

From Miyamoto Musashi's The Book of Five Rings

1. Think of what is right and true.
2. Practice and cultivate teh science.
3. Become acquainted with the arts.
4. Know the principles of the crafts.
5. Understand teh harm and benefit in everything.
6. Learn to see everything accurately.
7. Become aware of what is not obvious.
8. Be careful even in small matters.
9. Do not do anything useless.

If you misperceive the path even slightly, if you stray from the right way, you fall into evil states

When you take up the sword, in any case the ideais to kill an opponent. Even though you may catch, hit, or block an opponent's slashing sword, or tie it up or obstruct it, all of these moves are opportunities for cutting the opponent down. This must be understood. If you think of catching, think of hitting, think of blocking, think of tying up, or think of obstructing, you will thereby become unable to make the kill. It is crucial to think of everything as an opportunity to kill. This should be given careful consideration

In large-scale military sceince as well, opponents are thought of as powerful and dealt with carefully.

If you think you are getting into a deadlock, then it is essential to immediately change your approach, ascertain the opponent's state, and determine how to win by means of a very different tactic.

When you try something on an opponent, if it does not work the first time, you will not get any benefit out of rushing to do it again. Change your tactics abruptly, doing something completely different. If that still does not work, then try something else.

From Jules Verne's A Journey to the Center of the Earth

Hunger, prolonged, is temporary madness!

And that's all I've got right now.

[Icarus]

I think it was something like:

WHAT CAN THE GRASS HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER?

Death, Reaper-Man.