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977f03c
|
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
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books
classic
humor
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Jane Austen |
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10df22b
|
If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.
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classic
heathcliff
love
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Emily Brontë |
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57ffd8f
|
"Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"... "It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine..."
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children
classic
nature
spring
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Frances Hodgson Burnett |
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a8d8881
|
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
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|
classic
murder
wit
|
William Shakespeare |
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7a2464e
|
I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.
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|
appearance
beautiful
beauty
bukowski
classic
classics
loneliness
lonely
mirror
people
poem
poetry
reflection
self
self-esteem
soul
superficial
superficial-beauty
superficiality
ugly
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Charles Bukowski |
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5e141e5
|
and love is a word used too much and much too soon.
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|
classic
classics
i-love-you
love
patience
poem
poetry
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Charles Bukowski |
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2e49795
|
He had been held to her by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking, rather than by a chain he could not break.
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|
classic
far-from-the-madding-crowd
fiction
gabriel-oak
romance
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Thomas Hardy |
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a38abad
|
"Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier, of how bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful?" he said. "It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, 'more like deer than human being.' To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn." --
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|
classic
classic-literature
classics
god
history
murder
terror
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Donna Tartt |
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efa9e3f
|
"Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier, of how bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful?" he said. "It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, 'more like deer than human being.' To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn."
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|
classic
classic-literature
classics
god
history
murder
terror
|
Donna Tartt |
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af3fca9
|
-But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know? -I believe; I have faith: I am going to God. -Where is God? What is God? -My maker and yours, who will never destroy what He created. I rely implicitly on His power, and confide wholly in His goodness: I count the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to Him, reveal Him to me.
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|
classic
death
friend
religion
|
Charlotte Brontë |
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7df7118
|
"God save King Pendragon, May his reign long drag on, God save the King. Send him most gorious, Great and uproarious,
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|
classic
humor
pendragon
|
T.H. White |
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b9fac40
|
It goes so fast, he thought, they don't tell you that, how fast it goes...
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|
classic
dark
emotional
life
mental-hospital
vampire
|
S.E. Hinton |
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3c079eb
|
"Gormenghast. Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracts. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet beats away from a choked river. Deep in a fist of stone a doll's hand wriggles, warm rebellious on the frozen palm. A shadow shifts its length. A spider stirs...
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|
classic
gormenghast
gothic
literature
|
Mervyn Peake |
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1bcf163
|
Life streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant, until it seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy and pour forth generously over the world.
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|
classic
classic-literature
happiness
jack-london
nature
|
Jack London |
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e49fe2c
|
The Christian admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the materialist's world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane. The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the interesting person before mentioned is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.
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|
classic
|
G.K. Chesterton |
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c25585c
|
I know my maker sanctions what I do. For the world's judgement - I wash my hands thereof. For man's opinion- I defy it
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|
classic
inspirational
romance
|
Charlotte Brontë |
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a50f21c
|
"Her gaze wavered towards one of the books on the sales counter beside the register, a hardcover copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet with many of the pages dog-eared and stained with coffee and tea. The store owner caught her looking at it and slid it across the counter towards her. "You ever read Hamlet?" he questioned. "I tried to when I was in high school," said Mandy, picking up the book and flipping it over to read the back. "I mean, it's expected that everyone should like Shakespeare's books and plays, but I just...." her words faltered when she noticed him laughing to himself. "What's so funny, Sir?" she added, slightly offended. "...Oh, I'm not laughing at you, just with you," said the store owner. "Most people who say they love Shakespeare only pretend to love his work. You're honest Ma'am, that's all. You see, the reason you and so many others are put-off by reading Shakespeare is because reading his words on paper, and seeing his words in action, in a play as they were meant to be seen, are two separate things... and if you can find a way to relate his plays to yourself, you'll enjoy them so much more because you'll feel connected to them. Take Hamlet for example - Hamlet himself is grieving over a loss in his life, and everyone is telling him to move on but no matter how hard he tries to, in the end all he can do is to get even with the ones who betrayed him." "...Wow, when you put it that way... sure, I think I'll buy a copy just to try reading, why not?" Mandy replied with a smile."
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|
bookstore
classic
coffee
diffcult
dog-eared
geek
grief
hamlet
loss
nerd
reading
revenge
shakespeare
tea
|
Rebecca McNutt |
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18cd82a
|
If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable. It is this achievement of my creed that I shall chiefly pursue in these pages.
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|
classic
|
G.K. Chesterton |
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acdcee7
|
Your slave and enemy, D.Karamazov
|
|
classic
russian
|
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
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2746703
|
Of course there must be lots of magic in the world but people don't know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen.
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|
classic
magic
|
Frances Hodgson Burnett |