Favorite Literary Quotes (short ones!)

Everything except LibriVox (yes, this is where knitting gets discussed. Now includes non-LV Volunteers Wanted projects)
maxgal
Posts: 3247
Joined: June 8th, 2019, 10:24 am

Post by maxgal »

And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all. -- "The Masque of the Red Death," Edgar Allan Poe, of course.
Louise
"every little breeze..."

Fun Fact: 40% of all statistics are wrong.
KevinS
Posts: 15465
Joined: April 7th, 2019, 8:32 am
Contact:

Post by KevinS »

“I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door."

From "A Boy in France" by Salinger
Bookworm360
Posts: 856
Joined: December 25th, 2017, 11:23 pm
Location: Below the Paris opera house

Post by Bookworm360 »

"I blush to add that when the bird
Took in the situation,
He said one brief emphatic word
Unfit for publication."
-The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven
Why is it so funny when an author hints at a thing but doesn't say it outright? :lol:
2 Timothy 1:7. Look it up.
Specializing in Middle-Earth🧝‍♀️, classics📖, and art🎨🖌
TriciaG
LibriVox Admin Team
Posts: 60512
Joined: June 15th, 2008, 10:30 pm
Location: Toronto, ON (but Minnesotan to age 32)

Post by TriciaG »

This isn't all that short, but it was so good when I heard it PL'ing today, I had to post it on Facebook:

"Happiness is not, like a large and beautiful gem, so uncommon and rare, that all search for it is vain, all efforts to obtain it hopeless; but it consists of a series of smaller and commoner gems, grouped and set together, forming a pleasing and graceful whole. Happiness consists in the enjoyment of little pleasures scattered along the common path of life, which, in the eager search for some great and exciting joy, we are apt to overlook."
("Thrift" by Samuel Smiles)
Serial novel: The Wandering Jew
Medieval England meets Civil War Americans: Centuries Apart
Humor: My Lady Nicotine
Bookworm360
Posts: 856
Joined: December 25th, 2017, 11:23 pm
Location: Below the Paris opera house

Post by Bookworm360 »

That's gorgeous. :D
2 Timothy 1:7. Look it up.
Specializing in Middle-Earth🧝‍♀️, classics📖, and art🎨🖌
zachh
Posts: 432
Joined: November 1st, 2020, 5:02 am
Location: Piercefield, NY
Contact:

Post by zachh »

"Poverty is the banana skin on the doorstep of romance"
Something Fishy, by P. G. Wodehouse

Does Wodehouse count as literary?
maxgal
Posts: 3247
Joined: June 8th, 2019, 10:24 am

Post by maxgal »

zachh wrote: April 10th, 2021, 4:13 pm "Poverty is the banana skin on the doorstep of romance"
Something Fishy, by P. G. Wodehouse

Does Wodehouse count as literary?
O YES.
Louise
"every little breeze..."

Fun Fact: 40% of all statistics are wrong.
SonOfTheExiles
Posts: 2649
Joined: December 20th, 2013, 1:14 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Post by SonOfTheExiles »

“Take the piano teacher, for example. He always says, Relax, relax. But how can you relax while your fingers are rushing over the keys? Yet they have to relax. The singing teacher and the golf pro say exactly the same thing. And in the realm of spiritual exercises we find that the person who teaches mental prayer does too. We have somehow to combine relaxation with activity…

The personal conscious self being a kind of small island in the midst of an enormous area of consciousness — what has to be relaxed is the personal self, the self that tries too hard, that thinks it knows what is what, that uses language. This has to be relaxed in order that the multiple powers at work within the deeper and wider self may come through and function as they should. In all psychophysical skills we have this curious fact of the law of reversed effort: the harder we try, the worse we do the thing.”

— Aldous Huxley, The Divine Within: Selected Writings on Enlightenment
Currently on sabbatical from Librivox
maxgal
Posts: 3247
Joined: June 8th, 2019, 10:24 am

Post by maxgal »

How do I know what I think until I see what I say? -- E.M. Forster (probably)
Louise
"every little breeze..."

Fun Fact: 40% of all statistics are wrong.
Bookworm360
Posts: 856
Joined: December 25th, 2017, 11:23 pm
Location: Below the Paris opera house

Post by Bookworm360 »

“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve” :lol:
-Bilbo, in The Fellowship of the Ring
2 Timothy 1:7. Look it up.
Specializing in Middle-Earth🧝‍♀️, classics📖, and art🎨🖌
maxgal
Posts: 3247
Joined: June 8th, 2019, 10:24 am

Post by maxgal »

Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. -- Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Last edited by maxgal on November 1st, 2021, 4:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
Louise
"every little breeze..."

Fun Fact: 40% of all statistics are wrong.
GettingTooOld
Posts: 416
Joined: October 19th, 2021, 3:28 am

Post by GettingTooOld »

maxgal wrote: November 27th, 2020, 10:27 am "Let all the poison that lurks in the mud hatch out." -- Claudius the God, Robert Graves
that reminds me of Nausicaä of the Valley
lightcrystal
Posts: 1202
Joined: October 22nd, 2021, 10:55 pm
Location: Melbourne with kangaroos

Post by lightcrystal »

"Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you."

- Joseph Heller: Catch 22.
I'm a geek. I wreck my computer. Then I fix it.
mightyfelix
LibriVox Admin Team
Posts: 11082
Joined: August 7th, 2016, 6:39 pm

Post by mightyfelix »

"Mankind had disappointed him, but here was a dog!" -Sir Gibbie, George MacDonald

(And I'm not even a dog person! :wink: )
maxgal
Posts: 3247
Joined: June 8th, 2019, 10:24 am

Post by maxgal »

"I have one friend, a dog...." -- The House on the Borderland, Willam Hope Hodgson
Louise
"every little breeze..."

Fun Fact: 40% of all statistics are wrong.
Post Reply