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Original poster

Geek me up. Your favourite literary quotes? Name the text and add your own.

221 replies

ClawsandEffect · 30/09/2025 11:24

Better never means better for everyone.

Unsex me here.

OP posts:
Eileen101 · 30/09/2025 21:58

WhistlingBrooks · 30/09/2025 21:49

“Barkis is willing”.

David copperfield

Cinaferna · 30/09/2025 21:59

magimedi · 30/09/2025 21:16

Only connect.

(Which I think should be everones mantra for life)

E M Forster - Howard's end?

holidaydreaming · 30/09/2025 21:59

ChristmasCalamity · 30/09/2025 21:44

placemats where is the overflow pipe quotation from? I want to read that book.

I think I have too many to name. I'll have to choose just a few.

I don't want to wrong anybody, so I won't go so far as to say that she actually wrote poetry. But her conversation to my mind was of a nature calculated to excite the liveliest suspicions.

"Plum puffs won't minister to a mind diseased."

I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.

Three men in a boat?

Obvious but…
It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

thistimelastweek · 30/09/2025 22:02

Grumpyoldpersonwithcats · 30/09/2025 21:51

The Wasp Factory. Haven't read it for decades but I remembered that line. I must reread it.

Edited
Show quote history

Me too!
Quoted from memory so not sure I got it word perfect.

Needlenardlenoo · 30/09/2025 22:03

Cinaferna · 30/09/2025 21:50

And mine is:
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”

Also: "This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou cans't not then be false to any man (Polonius, Hamlet)

Show quote history

The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald.

"It was the day my grandmother exploded."

Needlenardlenoo · 30/09/2025 22:04

"Space. Never could get the hang of space. You might think it's a long way down the road to the corner shop, but that's just peanuts to space."

Grumpyoldpersonwithcats · 30/09/2025 22:04

Needlenardlenoo · 30/09/2025 22:03

The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald.

"It was the day my grandmother exploded."

Show quote history

Isn't that The Crow Road?

MarthaBeach · 30/09/2025 22:07

Needlenardlenoo · 30/09/2025 22:04

"Space. Never could get the hang of space. You might think it's a long way down the road to the corner shop, but that's just peanuts to space."

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

Here's mine:
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not

ChristmasCalamity · 30/09/2025 22:08

holidaydreaming · 30/09/2025 21:59

Three men in a boat?

Obvious but…
It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

Show quote history

Yes! Yours is Harry Potter and the meaning of that line is the only bit that's really stayed with me from the books. Very true.

Jewelledslice · 30/09/2025 22:08

"A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?"

And

"He wept for the darkness in a man's heart, and a dear friend named "

CordeliaNaismithVorkosigan · 30/09/2025 22:08

MarthaBeach · 30/09/2025 22:07

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

Here's mine:
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not

Show quote history

The Tempest.

CordeliaNaismithVorkosigan · 30/09/2025 22:09

Jewelledslice · 30/09/2025 22:08

"A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?"

And

"He wept for the darkness in a man's heart, and a dear friend named "

Your second one is Lord of the Flies.

VeryQuaintIrene · 30/09/2025 22:09

"He wept for the darkness in a man's heart, and a dear friend named "

Lord of the Flies?

VeryQuaintIrene · 30/09/2025 22:10

"We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you."

seaelephant · 30/09/2025 22:13

'Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you'

Vivisays · 30/09/2025 22:13

EineReiseDurchDieZeit · 30/09/2025 12:20

Be with me always, take any form, drive me mad, only do not leave me in this abyss where I can’t find you. Oh, it is unutterable I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!

Katherine Earnshaw - Wuthering Heights

“Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.”

Grumpyoldpersonwithcats · 30/09/2025 22:13

Streptocock Gee to Banbury T, to see a fine bathroom and wc.

dudsville · 30/09/2025 22:14

Great idea for a thread OP! My contribution is probably very obvious, but I love it so much.

First, I got myself born.

TonstantWeader · 30/09/2025 22:15

CordeliaNaismithVorkosigan · 30/09/2025 21:28

… the growing good of the world is partly dependent upon unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Middlemarch. A wonderful book. The scene where Dorothea and Ladislaw declare themselves is one of my favourite scenes ever.

"Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful"

Abominableday · 30/09/2025 22:17

"It was time to be strong,
take a chance ... after all,
Forever was such a long time
to feel small."
Teared up every time I read this.

NotnowMavis · 30/09/2025 22:20

@Vivisays King Lear?

Mine is: the good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.

GinToBegin · 30/09/2025 22:22

‘The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.’ Bleak but beautiful.

Pieceofpurplesky · 30/09/2025 22:23

Thewalrusandthecarpenter · 30/09/2025 20:31

I thought that was from one of the Anne books …

Show quote history

You are correct @Thewalrusandthecarpenter

CordeliaNaismithVorkosigan · 30/09/2025 22:24

Importance of Being Earnest! Spoken by Miss Prism. I love that line.

ETA: that was for @Vivisays

Abandon hope, all of you who enter here.

Pieceofpurplesky · 30/09/2025 22:25

Snugglemonkey · 30/09/2025 21:45

Oh I love Charlotte's Web!

Show quote history

It's one of the best @Snugglemonkey, DS sobbed when I read it to him ... I can still picture his little lip wobbling for hours after.