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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:
Pieceofpurplesky · 01/10/2025 21:30

HonoriaBulstrode · 01/10/2025 21:26

It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend [redacted] was distinguished.

Sherlock Holmes?

researchers3 · 01/10/2025 21:35

KnickerlessParsons · 30/09/2025 12:39

Daddy! My Daddy!

I well up every time.

The Railway Children 😥

FuckRealityBringMeABook · 01/10/2025 21:36

SchnizelVonKrumm · 01/10/2025 19:14

Lord of the Flies. "...the darkness of a man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy" 😥

And my addition: "Midway through the journey of our life I found myself in a dark forest"

Show quote history

Dantes Inferno

CanadianJohn · 02/10/2025 03:23

"It seemed to ??? that he would not be needing his body any more, so he left it lying on the edge of the ditch ..."

CordeliaNaismithVorkosigan · 02/10/2025 06:40

Watership Down, @CanadianJohn ?

CordeliaNaismithVorkosigan · 02/10/2025 06:41

It’s Hazel, at the very end of the book.

cornbunting · 02/10/2025 11:56

Oh Hazel. I love that book so much.

ChiaraMontague · 02/10/2025 13:28

“Often we pass beside happiness without seeing it, without looking at it, or even if we have seen and looked at it, without recognising it.”

atiaofthejulii · 02/10/2025 17:24

arcticpandas · 01/10/2025 20:08

I never dared to read it to my kids. They would have cried their eyes out. I suppose we were more stoic back in the days.. I still remember how beautiful it was when Jonathan saved his brother. And how the sick kid noticed thought that everyone thought that he was the one who should have died.. I read it and also listened to the audiobook with the actors' voices over and over again...

Show quote history

Oh no, I wept over it as a child, and would read it any time I wanted a good cry 😁 When I read it to my lot, they were far less moved.

atiaofthejulii · 02/10/2025 17:27

'Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London' sounds to me like Oscar Wilde?

38thparallel · 02/10/2025 17:30

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
Tennyson

38thparallel · 02/10/2025 17:35

Nor is people’s judgment always true: The most may err as grossly as the few. Dryden

How ill white hairs become a fool and jester
Henry IV

Through tattered clothes great vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks. Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw doth pierce it.
King Lear

TheGreatWesternShrew · 02/10/2025 21:02

arcticpandas · 01/10/2025 20:08

I never dared to read it to my kids. They would have cried their eyes out. I suppose we were more stoic back in the days.. I still remember how beautiful it was when Jonathan saved his brother. And how the sick kid noticed thought that everyone thought that he was the one who should have died.. I read it and also listened to the audiobook with the actors' voices over and over again...

Show quote history

A colleague of mine gave me this book as a gift when I left the country. I really should finish it.

TheGreatWesternShrew · 02/10/2025 21:03

HonoriaBulstrode · 01/10/2025 21:26

It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend [redacted] was distinguished.

Lemony Snicket.

38thparallel · 02/10/2025 21:56

Mrs Quayne’s idealism spread round the house like flu.
Elizabeth Bowen.

But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
T.S.Eliot

HollyGolightly4 · 02/10/2025 22:04

Katkins17 · 01/10/2025 20:01

'Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London'

and…a different book.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

The second one is To kill a mockingbird 🤍

"I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I'll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again..."

Crucible · 02/10/2025 22:39

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.

Absomy favourite. The last lines of Middlemarch.

Crucible · 02/10/2025 22:40

Absolutely.....typo!

Shinybrightdarling · 02/10/2025 22:56

atiaofthejulii · 30/09/2025 23:47

Oh my goodness, is that The Brothers Lionheart?

Read that to my kids and had to warn them that I would weep copiously at the beginning and the end!

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Such a beautifully written book, but oh so sad!

cornbunting · 02/10/2025 23:00

TheGreatWesternShrew · 02/10/2025 21:02

A colleague of mine gave me this book as a gift when I left the country. I really should finish it.

Show quote history

Yes you should! It's magnificent.

cornbunting · 02/10/2025 23:02

HollyGolightly4 · 02/10/2025 22:04

The second one is To kill a mockingbird 🤍

"I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I'll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again..."

Show quote history

Ohh, His Dark Materials. Such a fantastic series. That quote is Lyra, towards the end of the third book, I believe.

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