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AIBU?

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Aibu to ask for your favourite quotes from books

226 replies

Ohrobin · 19/02/2019 20:59

Just that please!

Fav quotes from books and who wrote the book.

Cheers!

Mine is from Winnie the pooh - "how lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard"

OP posts:
PerkingFaintly · 19/02/2019 23:35

"That will make your ladyship's situation at present more pitiable; but it will have no effect on me."

I often channel Elizabeth talking to Lady Catherine de B.

Skirmisher · 19/02/2019 23:48

I prefer to quote Lady De B

'I send no regards to your mother!'

'are the shades of to be thus polluted!'

Witchend · 20/02/2019 00:36

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

Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

ContadoraExplorer · 20/02/2019 00:46

@rafabella8 that's my favourite too.

MaryTeenOfScots · 20/02/2019 00:51

"… Our wishes are like tinder: the flint and steel of circumstances are continually striking out sparks, which vanish immediately, unless they chance to fall upon the tinder of our wishes; then, they instantly ignite, and the flame of hope is kindled in a moment.”

Agnes Grey by Emily Brontë

storynanny · 20/02/2019 00:57

From a Jilly Cooper novel
Blood is thicker than Walterand noone is thicker than Walter
Or something like that!
I also love the quote
" simplicity is the ultimate sophistication"

Osirus · 20/02/2019 01:05

“Fugem, fugem all.” - Powder River, Ralph Cotton

JaneJeffer · 20/02/2019 01:09

I cannot bear to think that he is alive in the world and thinking ill of me
P&P
Ah! There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.
Emma
While she sought
for this paper, her very heart-pulse was arrested by the tone in
which Mr. Thornton spoke. His voice was hoarse, and trembling
with tender passion, as he said:--
'Margaret!'
For an instant she looked up; and then sought to veil her
luminous eyes by dropping her forehead on her hands. Again,
stepping nearer, he besought her with another tremulous eager
call upon her name.
'Margaret!'
Still lower went the head; more closely hidden was the face,
almost resting on the table before her. He came close to her. He
knelt by her side, to bring his face to a level with her ear; and
whispered-panted out the words:--
'Take care.If you do not speakI shall claim you as my own in
some strange presumptuous way.--Send me away at once, if I must
go;Margaret!'
At that third call she turned her face, still covered with her
small white hands, towards him, and laid it on his shoulder,
hiding it even there; and it was too delicious to feel her soft
cheek against his, for him to wish to see either deep blushes or
loving eyes. He clasped her close. But they both kept silence.
North and South
Sorry about strikethrough. I love the whole passage

CSIblonde · 20/02/2019 01:12

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there" . From The Go Between by L P Hartley. 1900's doomed love affair between farmer & an young upper class woman due to be married off to a Lord: & the 'collateral damage' unsuspecting young boy who took their messages.

user1473878824 · 20/02/2019 01:18

“And the granite sky wept.”

Scoop by Waugh. Just think it’s beautiful.

Keepthebloodynoisedown · 20/02/2019 02:00

She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
J.D. Salinger- A Girl I knew

Ihavealwaysknown · 20/02/2019 02:04

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”

Oh the places you’ll go- Dr Suess

RustyBear · 20/02/2019 02:30

It is a sad but indisputable fact that in this imperfect world Genius is too often condemned to walk alone - if the earthier members of the community see it coming and have time to duck.
PG Wodehouse, Leave It To Psmith

BeckyButterworth · 20/02/2019 03:11

'Young Sam slept peacefully in a makeshift bed. One day, Vimes hoped, he would be able to tell him that on one special night he'd been guarded by four troll watchmen. They'd been off duty but volunteered to come in for this... Sam hoped the boy would be impressed; the most other kids could hope for was angels.'

And everything else by Terry Pratchett (most especially quotes by Death and Granny).

Love the Blue Castle quote!

Anything written by Elizabeth Goudge, especially when she described Wiggins in The Little White Horse, but lost my copy, so can't quote it sadly.

CSIblonde · 20/02/2019 04:35

"You need to be kissed often, by someone who knows how" From Gone with the Wind: Rhett Butler to Scarlett O'Hara the first time they meet.

sillage · 20/02/2019 04:43

"After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

Swedetalker · 20/02/2019 05:51

"But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality."

Says the Dragon in Guards Guards by Terry Pratchet

MrsArabin · 20/02/2019 06:05

This is a lovely thread. I'm now making a mental list of everything I want to read or re-read:

Winnie the Pooh books
West Barsetshire series
North and South
and the Outlander books which I've resisted so far.

Shoxfordian · 20/02/2019 06:07

I can not express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, andheremained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it.My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, IamHeathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself - but as my own being;so, don't talk of our separation again - it is impracticable

And

he shall never know how I love him; and that not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.

Wuthering Heights

Rafabella8 · 20/02/2019 06:13

@TheOrangeOwl I love this too.

Swedetalker · 20/02/2019 06:13

"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..."

"I'll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you...We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pin trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams...And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won't just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight..."

  • the amber spyglass
DuploRelatedInjury · 20/02/2019 06:28

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" - JK Rowling, HP and the deathly hallows

There's a large number of quotes I love from Harry Potter, but this is one of my favourites.

And:
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." - Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

TheEgregiousPeach · 20/02/2019 07:11

‘It’s just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with life that fate sneaks up behind him with the old lead piping’
PG Wodehouse

‘I am, I am, I am’
Plath, the bell jar

LadyOfTheCanyon · 20/02/2019 07:23

Ahhhh @Swedetalker
I was coming on to post that.

Also "Shame to die with one bullet left, though."

MollysLips · 20/02/2019 12:25

The International Express man couldn't understand it. I mean, in the old days, and it wasn't that long ago really, there had been an angler every dozen yards along the bank; children had played there; courting couples had come to listen to the splish and gurgle of the river, and to hold hands, and to get all lovey-dovey in the Sussex sunset. He'd done that with Maud, his missus, before they were married. They'd come here to spoon and, on one memorable occasion, fork."

From "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman.

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