Favorite Quotes

[Farimir Captain of Gondor]

It maybe way over used and completely commercialized but its one that gave me goose bumps the first time i heard it, not when i read it. I know this is a "book quote" thread but it just had a different effect when i heard it out loud.

"To be or not to be, that is the question. whether its nobler in the mind to suffer the sling and arrows of outrageous fortune or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them."

I know i didnt format it the way shakespeare did but I think it reads the same.

[Lotesse]

Shahespeare can NEVER be over-commercialised! Hamlet - or any Shakespeare, for that matter, is the bomb, and all his plays are rife with priceless and timeless quotations still very much in use to this day. The famous Hamlet "To be or not to be" monologue never, ever goes out of style. It gives me goosebumps, too.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

[Serenoli]

I like especially the bit -

"And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry."

I think I like it more considering how much Jeeves quotes it!

[Rían]

oh, how interesting - I just logged on to start a thread on favorite book quotes, and someone else beat me to it!

Well, I'm enjoying those I'm reading - keep 'em coming!

I love E. Nesbit's fairy stores - they're clever and very, very funny!

I've always liked this little phrase from "The Charmed Life" - the king was trying to kill the prince with the charmed life (who was disguised as a lift-man (non-Brits: elevator attendant) to win the heart of the princess) but it never worked because of the charmed life. And the prince's parents (another king and queen) found out about it in the paper thusly:

"Because the King had read in his newpaper, and the Queen in hers, that the Lift-man was being executed every morning from nine to twelve ..."

[Rían]

Just a fragment of a quote, but I always loved "Hektor, tamer of horses" from the Iliad...


edit: And I liked this description of the main character starting to think for herself, from a book by George MacDonald:

"Now thinking, especially to one who tries it for the first time, is seldom a comfortable operation, and hence Helen was very close to becoming actually uncomfortable. ... Helen had supposed she could think because the thoughts of other people had passed through her quite regularly, leaving many a phantom conclusion behind. But this had been their thinking, not hers."
~ The Curate of Glaston, by George MacDonald

[Rían]

The first two lines of Austen's Pride and Prejudice are just brilliant:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

edit - grrr, I was going to add a line from Northanger Abbey but it's missing! Now who did I loan it to ....

[Lotesse]

nice quotes, Rian, La Triple-Postie Reina! That's gonna be my new nickname for you.

Speaking of love quotes from literature-

"Then must you strive to be worthy of her love. Be brave and pure, fearless to the strong and humble to the weak; and so, whether this love prosper or no, you will have fitted yourself to be honored by a maiden's love, which is, in sooth, the highest guerdon which a true knight can hope for."

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from The White Company

[Rían]

well, at least the 3 posts were made over a few days this time I want to keep the thread going!

I've always liked this from Kipling's The Jungle Books (Mowgli had done something that he wasn't supposed to do, and Bagheera and Baloo had to fight to get him back) :

"...Mowgli, hast thou anything to say?"

"Nothing. I did wrong. Baloo and thou art wounded. It is just."

Bagheera gave him half a dozen love-taps from a panther's point of view (they would hardly have waked one of his own cubs), but for a seven-year-old boy they amounted to as severe a beating as you could wish to avoid. When it was all over Mowgli sneezed, and picked himself up without a word.

"Now," said Bagheera, "jump on my back, Little Brother, and we will go home."

One of the beauties of Jungle Law is that punishment settles all scores. There is no nagging afterwards.

[Lotesse]

That's a really sweet one! I loved that. I have got to read that book; I'm only just used to the little movies. Kipling is awesome.

I'll help you keep the threqad here alive, Rian; I always love these quote-exchanges.

Here's one from Shakespeare's Othello:



"Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed."

[Lotesse]

This one's a good one. It sounds like it would make a good title:

"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!"

Mark Twain, from The Prince and the Pauper

Doesn't that sound like a cool title, though? Knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows... hmmm, I like that. I love my current title too much to change it though.

[Rían]

yes, that has a very nice sound!

[The last sane person]

I am thinking of changing mine. Since it seems that I have fallen out with my father and am no longer an Iranian...I've read Prince and the Pauper, but I dont remember that line...

[Lotesse]

How fortuitious! I think that's the right word... Anyway, what I mean is I thought of you when I thought of the title like that. Because I think of you as a knight, like Raendil & Captain Shah, plus the shadows & dreams thing reminded me of you too, for some reason.

[Rían]

Originally Posted by Lotesse

That's a really sweet one! I loved that. I have got to read that book; I'm only just used to the little movies. Kipling is awesome.

The books are great, IMO - not at all like the Disney move. There are about 5 stories or so, can't remember exactly, hence the plural in the title (The Jungle Books).

There's a line I love in his Just So Stories but again, I can't find the book right now!

I love Wilkie Collins's books The Moonstone and The Woman in White. I love Betteredge's description of his marriage:

We were not a happy couple, and not a miserable couple. We were six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. How it was I don't understand, but we always seemed to be getting, with the best of motives, in one another's way. When I wanted to go upstairs, there was my wife coming down; or when my wife wanted to go down, there was I coming up. That is married life, according to my experience of it.

After five years of misunderstandings on the stairs, it pleased an all-wise Providence to relieve us of each other by taking my wife.

Funny! He is my favorite Collins character.

(ps - sorry to hear about your father, Sane )

[Serenoli]

LOL, I love Betteredge, and his Robinson Crusoe! And that quote is so funny!! I have only read the two Wilkie Collins books you mentioned... loved them both!

[Farimir Captain of Gondor]

Originally Posted by Lotesse

This one's a good one. It sounds like it would make a good title:

"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!"

Mark Twain, from The Prince and the Pauper

Doesn't that sound like a cool title, though? Knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows... hmmm, I like that. I love my current title too much to change it though.

*sneaks in and snags Tessa's Knight title*
*looks left to right*
*runs away*

[Lady Marion Magdalena]

I love Betteredge, and his Robinson Crusoe

Isn't Robinson Crusoe one of Defoe's characters?

[Rían]

In Collin's book, The Moonstone, Betteredge loves Robinson Crusoe and keeps thinking it predicts things - very funny!

[sun-star]

I read this recently and liked it - don't know where it's from, but it's by W.H. Auden:

"Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate."

[Rían]

hmmm, interesting!

I've heard of him but never read him ...