Meaningful Quotes and Passages from Books

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"But why," he said with animation, "do the English not read their own great literature?"
Victor laughed triumphantly, and said, "Because at school they are made to hate it."

Olaf Stapledon, A Man Divided

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

— Shelley, “Ozymandias”

“Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it—the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place.”

— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

— T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul –

— Emily Dickinson

Very Nice ...love most of E Dickenson work .

A job worth doing ...is worth doing Right.

"What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that’s really the essence of programming. By the time you’ve sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you’ve certainly learned something about it yourself. The teacher usually learns more than the pupil. Isn’t that true?"


Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

When I was in college, I found Robert Herrick’s poetry and carpe diem poetry in general especially meaningful. Given my upbringing, I was always taught that one shouldn’t be living for the present but the afterlife - that there’d always be time to do what we truly wanted to do then. Sometimes I’d even receive judgmental comments from fellow believers for reading secular books and playing the piano. Those certainly aren’t activities Herrick had in mind, but they were and are my idea of having a good time and, often, how I’d like to consciously spend my time.

Come, let us go, while we are in our prime,
And take the harmless folly of the time!
We shall grow old apace, and die
Before we know our liberty.
Our life is short, and our days run
As fast away as does the sun.
And, as a vapour or a drop of rain,
Once lost, can ne'er be found again,
So when or you or I are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade,
All love, all liking, all delight
Lies drown'd with us in endless night.
Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying.

— Herrick (1591—1674), from “Corinna's Going a-Maying”

I also like his more popular, carpe diem poem “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.”

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

Couplets of Rhyme buried in time... wriiten by me . ...might not be much , but it was a fleeting moment after reading TPs last post. (A moment of inspiration ?)

^ Nice!

I do like poetry. It’s strange how something can stick with you and become a part of who you are in some way even if you haven’t read it in many years. Snippets of old poems and books often drift in and out of my head. One of the reasons for this thread was to consciously grasp them, reread them, and consider their implications before they sail back into the void that is…my brain.

I think rereading Virginia Woolf’s books recently with their stream-of-consciousness style has made me more conscious of my own thought processes.

Having experienced public shaming in my former church as well as shunning, few books have been as meaningful to me as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. It put words to my experience and made me feel less alone. It’s a challenging book to quote from and yet do it justice. However, my conscience won’t allow me to neglect it any longer, so here’s something:

“In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human kind. She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household joy, nor mourn with the kindred sorrow”

"Oddly enough, you will find in folk-mythology myriad instances about what seems a very petty side of otherwise grand people. You should read some of the stories current about Jesus as a young man still extant in Middle Eastern tradition. All show him as someone of quick temper very difficult to control and with an extremely deep sense of injustice. The milk-and-water Jesus of the Gospels doesn't come into it at all. Only the raid on Temple money-changers, and cursing a barren fig-tree show anything of the Jesus his own people remember."

--William G. Gray in a letter to Alan Richardson, Dec. 24th, 1971.