Share your favourite literary quote

There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

CSLewis (Voyage of the Dawn Treader)

Both my wedding poems are here.

"Life starts all over when it gets crisp in the Fall"

The Great Gatsby.

"What's a buttload?" Asked Frank.
Granuaile rescued me with her superior knowledge of indefinite measurements.
"Slightly more than a shitload but much less than a fuckton."

(Frank, Atticus and Granuaile)

Kevin Hearne

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier

Spiralling my BIL read this when we buried my sister's ashes.

Mine is:

" I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air—look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. "

And - not a book but a film - "Caro Diario" by Nanni Moretti - in the section called "Isole" during which Nanni and his friend Gerardo travel from Aeolian island to island looking for a good place to write but never really finding it:

"sono felice solo in mare, nel tragitto tra un'isola che ho appena lasciato e un'altra che devo ancora raggiungere."

"I am only happy when at sea, during the journey between an island that I have just left and one that I have not yet arrived at"

"No, forgive me.
If you no longer live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but
I shall stay alive,"

From "The Dead Woman" by Pablo Neruda and recited by Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman in "Truly Madly Deeply".

Totally beautiful in Spanish:

"No, perdóname.
Si tú no vives,
si tú, querida, amor mío, si tú
te has muerto,
todas las hojas caerán en mi pecho,
lloverá sobre mi alma noche y día,
la nieve quemará mi corazón,
andaré con frío y fuego
y muerte y nieve,
mis pies querrán marchar hacia donde tú duermes, pero seguiré vivo,"

So many from Mervyn Peake, but especially this description of Gormenghast's Tower of Flints:
"This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow."

And from Brideshead Revisited: "The fortnight in Venice past quickly and sweetly; perhaps too sweetly. I was drowning in honey, stingless."

And from Hamlet "Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew"

I love a good quote...

'he was as solitary as an oyster' Dickens. Just a perfect simile.

“A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams' Roald Dahl

'All children, except one, grow up' JM Barrie. I teach Y6 and Peter Pan is absolutely full of moving quotes about love, children and magic. Last year, I made each child a notebook with a Peter Pan quote as a leavers gift.....there were quite a few tears!!

Oscar Wilde gave good quote

One of my favourites is

Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them more

Dorothy Parker wrote this about Wilde and it makes me smile

If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever"
Keats
Ode on a grecian urn.

I don't like the poem but my lovely Grandad used to quote this sarcatically when something was obviously ugly!

Agree wholeheartedly with the Great Gatsby and Bell Jar quotes upthread and also 'past is a foreign country' in The Go Between. I also love the last line of that book. I'm paraphrasing but something like 'the south west prospect of the hall, long since hidden from my memory, sprang into view'. Also Pablo Neruda 'I want to do with you what Spring does with the cherry trees' and the opening of Rebecca - swoon. AND the tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech. OK, I'll stop now!!

I'm not sure where it's from but I love this -

Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.

Also,

' "After all this time?"
"Always," said Snape'

Oh! And I have another but for a daft reason!

"Call me Ishmael".... ive never read Moby Dick but I watched Matilda as a kid and at the end when she reads this line to Miss Honey and the warmth of knowing she is now loved and cherished and nurtured just melts into your heart alongside that line.

I probably should read the book.

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live" - Albus / Jk Rowling.

That one literally changed my outlook on life. Before it I was always distracted by how others lives were seemingly better than mine. I read it, realised what I was doing. It was like an epiphany, my life is 1000 times better for it.

And....

"Don't be afraid", "I am not afraid Harry, I am with you" - another Dumbledore / JKR. The most powerful man in her world felt protected by the (in comparison) weaker and less knowledgeable boy.

MadameDePompom's made me well up straight away.
Most of mine have already been mentioned - the one for To Kill a Mockingbird, and the I am Heathcliff passage from Wuthering Heights.
I have to add,
'And another thing. Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every single minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being 'in love', which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen away we found that we were one tree and not two.' - Louis de Berniers, Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
I love it.

Philip Larkin fearing death in Aubade:

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

Justlikeastar can't believe I forgot that one from Great Gatsby - fave last line of a book.

All of mine seem to be about dying or regrets or what might have been or what is past...

Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”

and

“Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men, doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.”

Both from The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

I have loads more but cant think of any as I am still all over the place thanks to Pooh! The one madame posted got me all teary.

'I have never seen a dead body or a female nipple. This is what comes from living in a cul de sac.'

Adrian Mole

This thread is wonderful. :)

I have many favourites, I'll try to contain myself a little but it's impossible for me to pick just the one -

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." - The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am." - The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

"Today I must be very careful, today I have left my armour at home." - Good Morning Midnight, Jean Rhys

"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." - The House at Pooh Corner, A. A. Milne (that one always gets me)

And one that will always hold a place in my heart:

"The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well." - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling