Post a random quote from a book you're reading

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When a book gets this sort of vituperative response, you know it's a good book!

You know it will garner attention. You know it will transcend ages.

Or, it will be butchered by your sister's hackneyed editing after your early yet mysterious death.

LOL.

Despite all which Anne did, Wuthering Heights stood the test of time.

Do you mean Charlotte? Yes, it certainly has! I wish Anne were as well regarded, though.

Of course....Charlotte!

They are abstract and bodiless. Their love is feline; it is tigerish … Their actions and sayings are like those of monomaniacs, or persons who have breathed nitrous oxide. One looks back at the story as to a world of brilliant figures in an atmosphere of mist; shapes that burn their colours into the brain, and depart into enveloping fog. This novel is the unformed writing of a giant’s hand; the large utterance of a baby god.

Allott, Miriam (ed). The Brontës: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1974.

Stikky was not an excellent spacer.  He had been up and down the rank ladder several times: promoted because time had passed; demoted because he overslept or failed an inspection.  He was, however, an excellent computer tech.  He intuitively understood the workings of the Navy's information systems better than any of the officers, indeed, better than anyone on the ship.  It was Stikky to whom the other ratings turned when connections failed, or new installations balked, or old devices slowed.  More than once, another rating got the credit and a promotion based on something Stikky did.

Yet in all of this, Stikky was content.  He enjoyed what he did; he had a continuing parade of devices to puzzle through, install, and confirm as operational.  As section officers cycled in, each tried to rehabilitate Stikky as a spacer, soon found that the network suffered, and so learned to leave Stikky alone.

Stikky was the butt of good-natured derision, which he ignored, or didn't notice.  It was always good-natured because the network suffered if it wasn't.  Today's ribbing was somehow different.

"Stikky!  The Captain wants to see you!"

"You're in trouble now!  Did you let his link crash?"

Stikky was immune to their comments and ignored them, until the Lieutenant touched his shoulder firmly, and said, "Stand up.  Let's see you.  Your tunic has a spot; let's get it changed.  The Captain wants you on the bridge."

It took longer than he expected and the Lieutenant was starting to get nervous.

-- Agent of the Imperium, Copyright © 2015 by Marc Miller

Whatever the intentions, this is still a great homage and in a way spot on (it's difficult to image somebody having that kind of mental fortitude)!




And this is also spot on and wonderful, thank you for posting

Excerpts from a review of Wuthering Heights, by Virginia Woolf (1916)

-Wuthering Heights is a more difficult book to understand than Jane Eyre, because Emily was a greater poet than Charlotte. When Charlotte wrote she said with eloquence and splendour and passion 'I love', 'I hate', 'I suffer'. Her experience, though more intense, is on a level with our own. But there is no 'I' in Wuthering Heights. There are no governesses and no employers. Emily was inspired by a more general conception. She looked out upon a world cleft in gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it through the mouths of her characters - not merely 'I love' or 'I hate', but 'we, the whole human race...', and 'you, the eternal powers ...'; these sentences remain unfinished.

-It is this suggestion of power underlying the apparitions of human nature and lifting them up into the presence of greatness that gives the book its huge stature among other novels.

-It is as if she could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognisable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers, then, is the rarest of all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts; with a few touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by speaking of the moor make its wind blow and the thunder roar.

"We ran out of beer, and I had to sh*t."

Charles Bukowski - Tales Of Ordinary Madness.

"Every locked door has a key. Every problem has a solution."

Oh, for the time when I shall sleep
Without identity,
And never care how rain may steep,
Or snow may cover me!
No promised heaven these wild desires
Could all, or half, fulfil;
No threatened hell, with quenchless fires,
Subdue this quenchless will!

So said I, and still say the same;
Still, to my death, will say—
Three gods within this little frame
Are warring night and day:
Heaven could not hold them all, and yet
They all are held in me;
And must be mine till I forget
My present entity!

Oh, for the time when in my breast
Their struggles will be o'er!
Oh, for the day when I shall rest,
And never suffer more!


Emily Brontë
3 February 1845

“Have been unavoidably detained by the world. Expect us when you see us.”

Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?

Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
Thy noble heart forever, ever more?

Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!

Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world's tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure but cannot do thee wrong!

No later light has lit my heaven,
No second morn has shone for me;
All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee.

But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.

Then did I check the tears of useless passion—
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine.

And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?


Remembrance
Emily Jane Brontë
3 March 1845

Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears




From "No Coward Soul is Mine"
Emily Brontë, 1846