Share your favourite literary quote

"Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words and never stops at all "

Emily dickinson

love this thread

"I am no bird , no net ensnares me I am a free being with an independent will"

Jane eyre

A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really..."Do the stars gaze back?" Now, that's a question.”

Neil Gaiman, Stardust.

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech
And babble the same speech without need of meaning....

A Dedication To My Wife - T.S.Eliot

MrsLeigh I sob at that quote. In fact I sob all the way through 'The Railway Children' . I have only read the book twice but we had it on a record when I was small. Persons observing me whilst watching the film have felt that I need medical assistance.

Another from the Great Gatsby "I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life".

"Oh! my Daddy, my Daddy!" - The Railway Children

Brings a tear to my eye every time and I don't cry

To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all -Elie Wiesel

Another Rebecca:

Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

Another favourite -

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing." from To Kill a Mockingbird.

He sat in the half upright. ‘I tink,’ he reflected, ‘I tink I’ll bronze me limbs.’ He rolled his trousers kneewards revealing the like of two thin white hairy affairs of the leg variety. He eyed them with obvious dissatisfaction. After examining them he spoke out aloud. ‘Holy God! Wot are dese den? Eh?’ He looked around for an answer. ‘Wot are dey?’ he repeated angrily. ‘Legs.’ ‘Legs? LEGS? Whose legs?’ ‘Yours.’ ‘Mine? And who are you?’ ‘The Author.’ ‘Author? Author? Did you write these legs?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, I don’t like dem. I don’t like ’em at all at all. I could ha’ writted better legs meself. Did you write your legs?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ahhh. Sooo! You got some one else to write your legs, some one who’s a good leg writer and den you write dis pair of crappy old legs fer me, well mister, it’s not good enough.’ ‘I’ll try and develop them with the plot.’ ‘It’s a dia-bo-likal liberty lettin’ an untrained leg writer loose on an unsuspectin’ human bean like me.’
Spike Milligan

Loving this thread, also

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars

Oscar wilde

Keith "Mr Palmer is so droll... He is always out of humour."

And Alice in Wonderland. I have this on the wall in our hallway:

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

"You can't write out voices. All I can say about your voice is that it is so familiar to me that I cannot perceive the world except with your voice framing the edges of my vision. It is on the horizon and under my feet". - The Book of Daniel by E.L Doctorow.

Ooh, Tennyson jinx, Enchanted!

X post with Tennyson! :)

This is so sad and so beautifully written, from In Memoriam by Tennyson:

DARK house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp’d no more—

Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep

At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away

The noise of life begins again,

And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the blank day.

I love Tennyson's 'Maud'

Ah, what shall I be at fifty
Should Nature keep me alive
If I find the world so bitter
When I am but twenty-five

My favourite Austen quote is this little snippet from Sense and Sensibility - she is so much cleverer and more acerbic than the bonnets-and-Mr-Darcy-in-a-wet-shirt brigade think she is:

Lady Middleton could no longer endure such a conversation, and therefore exerted herself to ask Mr. Palmer if there was any news in the paper.

"No, none at all," he replied, and read on.

Ooh, lovely thread!

Hamlet is full of quotable stuff. My favourites are "A little more than kin and less than kind" and

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies
But in battalions."

My favourite poet is Louis MacNeice and I could quote him forever but one I love
is :
"World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural."

And I love this from Barbara Trapido's 'Brother of the More Famous Jack', it strikes a chord. Jonathan is complaining to his mother about his new English teacher:

" 'The bloody fool asked me to paraphrase "heaven's cherubim horsed upon the sightless courier's of the air", he says, thumping about. 'What's the fucking good of paraphrasing it? It sounds better the way it is.' "

Another Pratchett: Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.