Can I ask if you've ever been tearful over a quote?

[ArmsClary]

I'm reading 1984 for the first time (I know, better late than never). Please no spoilers

I've just come across the line "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness." and it's made me really tearful

Now, I'm a little hormonal at present but it just got me wondering has a line from a book ever had this effect on you?

I'm probably going to be really disappointed once the outcome/context of this line is revealed further on but for now, I'll enjoy it!

An embarrassingly large number, but the one I immediately thought of was this, from Anne of Green Gables:

"Well now, I guess it wasn't a boy that took the Avery scholarship, was it? It was a girl — my girl — my girl that I'm proud of."

This always stayed with me since school

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

From Mary Oliver’s In Blackwater Woods. Those last lines make my bones shake with sadness.

”To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.”

From One hundred years of solitude :

Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment
when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.

This made me cry so much.

Also Henchards will from the Mayor of Casterbridge. Surely Hardy's most moving words,which have stuck with me from school many moons ago.

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

Mine has to be beths death jn little women

On the breast where she took her first breath she took her last

It's such a powerful line

@Welshwabbit

An embarrassingly large number, but the one I immediately thought of was this, from Anne of Green Gables:

"Well now, I guess it wasn't a boy that took the Avery scholarship, was it? It was a girl — my girl — my girl that I'm proud of."

God, yes. That always makes me sob.

And so we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past.

The Great Gatsby

From a book I read recently, The Starless Sea: “We are all just stardust and stories”. Simple yet beautiful.

The ending of Middlemarch gets me every time
“for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on 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."

These are all wonderful.

@heidbuttsupper that's a beautiful one 😞

‘I heard the doctor tell them I was dying,’ replied the child with a faint smile. ‘I am very glad to see you, dear; but don’t stop, don’t stop!’

‘Yes, yes, I will, to say good-b’ye to you,’ replied Oliver. ‘I shall see you again, Dick. I know I shall! You will be well and happy!’

‘I hope so,’ replied the child. ‘After I am dead, but not before. I know the doctor must be right, Oliver, because I dream so much of Heaven, and Angels, and kind faces that I never see when I am awake. Kiss me,’ said the child, climbing up the low gate, and flinging his little arms round Oliver’s neck. ‘Good-b’ye, dear! God bless you!’

The blessing was from a young child’s lips, but it was the first that Oliver had ever heard invoked upon his head; and through the struggles and sufferings, and troubles and changes, of his after life, he never once forgot it. - Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

Terrible reminder that there were women who slowly starved countless children to death

"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 pine 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

@doctorhamster

I just cried reading that. In fact, I have cried every post on this thread. Such touching quotations & so clear how intrinsic sadness is to the human condition. We get some consolation in literature, however.

An extract from ‘From Blossoms’ by Li-Young Li:

‘There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.’

Loads from children's books.
In particular, I can't read the line from 'The Tiger who Came to Tea: 'So they went out in the dark, and all the streetlamps were lit, and all the cars had their lights on and they walked down the road to a cafe' without my voice wobbling. Don't really know why.
'Then Bella did a very kind thing' in Dogger.
Reading 'War Horse' with my Y7 son for English homelearning at the moment. We have both been sobbing at several sections and for the chapter where Topthorn dies, he very sensibly suggested that we listened to it on YouTube rather than attempted to read it.
There are probably loads more. I cry easily.

“Does love wear out” said Small, “does it break or bend? Can you fix it, stick it, does it mend?”
“Oh help,” said Large “I’m not that clever I just know I’ll love you for ever”.

No Matter What

Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.

Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

I can’t remember where it’s from but I think of it often:

It’s you. It’s always been you. All these years.
And now we both know it.

I remember reading the happy prince when I was a kid with my mum and absolutely sobbing at the whole ending! I just re read it and turns out it still has the same effect!

The poor little Swallow grew colder and colder, but he would not leave the Prince, he loved him too well. He picked up crumbs outside the baker's door when the baker was not looking, and tried to keep himself warm by flapping his wings.

But at last he knew that he was going to die. He had just strength to fly up to the Prince's shoulder once more.'Good-bye, dear Prince!' he murmured, 'will you let me kiss your hand?'

'I am glad that you are going to Egypt at last, little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'you have stayed too long here; but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you.'

For far--oh, very far behind,
So far she cannot call to him,
Comes Tegumai alone to find
The daughter that was all to him

From The Just So Stories, published 3 years after Kipling lost his seven year old daughter to pneumonia.

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause

For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours

This....

@Aquamarine1029

"Its easy to make frends if you let pepul laff at you"

Flowers for Algernon.

There are loads of heartbreaking passages in that book.

One of my all time favourite books.

Thankyou so so much everyone. the beautiful lines have made me sob , but revived my faith that everyone just needs & longs for & never does it leave us .