Share your favourite literary quote

[SheHasAWildHeart]

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
~ Hamlet, William Shakespeare

[Lolimax]

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.
Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot

[Lolimax]

Ps lovely thread!

[everywhichway]

Another lovely line from PG Wodehouse:

I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now not unlike someone who, picking daisies on the railway line, has just caught the down express in the small of the back.

[SanityClause]

No more be griev'd at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults ...

[dementedma]

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

Edna St Vincent Millay.

[SammySeal15]

To be or not to be that is the question

Says it all.

[tinytreefrog]

And so....it was time to toss a turd into the pottage - uhtred of bebbanburg

Bernard cornwell - Saxon chronicals (I forget which one)

[MontyFox]

"The man who must brag for himself knows that no one else will." - Robin Hobb

[MiddleAgeMiddleEngland]

supslick I love that one. It's burned on my memory from having done R & G for A level decades ago. I also love "We've travelled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation." Brilliant play, I must read it again.

" Meanwhile, the trees were just as green as before, the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain.

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

Also, "Daddy, my Daddy!" Edith Nesbit, The Railway Children.

[Fleurygirl]

"If you care about something, you have to protect it,
If you're lucky enough to ding a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it" Owen Meany

[Fleurygirl]

Damn....
That should have been
If you're lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it
(oops, sorry Owen!)

[PetrolBastard]

'She was inclined to credit any extraordinary happening attributed to the whimsical perambulations of the buried.'

F Scott Fitzgerald's description of Gloria's fear of ghosts from The Beautiful and Dammed

[ShatnersBassoon]

"Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking."
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

It makes my chin wobble and my throat tighten, every time I think of it.

[Behooven]

something wicked this way comes gives me the shivers

[PetrolBastard]

I was reading some Ishiguro today. He does bland absurdity so beautifully. As well as breaking your heart almost before you notice it happening.

[Sadik]

Twickenham Garden, by John Donne, particularly the first verse:

Blasted with sighs, and surrounded with tears,
Hither I come to seek the spring,
And at mine eyes, and at mine ears,
Receive such balms as else cure every thing.
But O ! self-traitor, I do bring
The spider Love, which transubstantiates all,
And can convert manna to gall ;
And that this place may thoroughly be thought
True paradise, I have the serpent brought.

Or in a different mood
They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead.
I never knew your proper name was Heraclitus, Fred . . .

[SouthWestmom]

Nothing will come of nothing, speak again

King Lear my favourite Shakespeare

Love using the quote to annoy the kids when they are ignoring me but also love the whole play and all the meaning of it.

[MakingJudySmile]

There's a few, problem is I'm rubbish at remembering them. Only being able to recall if I come across them again - last one I re read was:

"My troubles are all over, and I am at home; and often before I am quite awake, I fancy I am still in the orchard at Birtwick, standing with my old friends under the apple-trees" Black Beauty



I've decided that each time I come across a quote in a book I'm going to have to put it in Goodreads!!

[VikingLady]

If I thought there was some god who gave two hoots about people, who watched 'em like a father and cared for 'em like a mother...well, you wouldn't catch me sayin' things like 'there are two sides to every question' and 'we must respect other people's beliefs.' You wouldn't find me just being gen'rally nice in the hope that it'd all turn out all right in the end, not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgivin' sword. And I did say burnin', Mister Oats, 'cos that's what it'd be. You say that you people don't burn folk or sacrifice people anymore, but that's what true faith would mean, y'see? Sacrficin' your own life, one day at a time to the flame, declarin' the truth of it, workin' for it, breathin' the soul of it. That's religion. Anything else is just...is just bein' nice. And a way of keeping in touch with the neighbors."

Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum.