More Quotes from Literature

1. "Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them." - from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.

2. "You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they're not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict - and they call it growth. At the end there's nothing left, nothing unreserved or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass." - from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

3. "It is only when we are very happy, that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony, to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness, and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys." - from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy.

4. "It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour." - from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

5. "Anne always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night. It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it." - from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

6. "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you." - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

7. "As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular." - from The Critic as Artist by Oscar Wilde.

8. "They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other." - from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

9. "How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads, to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams." - from Dracula by Bram Stoker.

10. "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven." - from Paradise Lost by John Milton.

Anne Frank Quotes

I've recently finished reading The Diary of Anne Frank, and along the way, I marked favourite passages and quotes. I read this book when I was younger, and didn't appreciate it like I should have. Now, I realise that it is one of the most eloquently poignant portrayals of hope in times of fear, and a very insightful look into the psyche and soul of an ordinary, yet extraordinary teenage girl.

1. "The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be alone, alone with the sky, nature and God. For then and only then can you feel that everything is as it should be and that God wants people to be happy amid nature's beauty and simplicity. As long as this exists, and that should be forever, I know there will be solace for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances. I firmly believe that nature can bring comfort to all who suffer." Wednesday, 23 February 1944.

2. "It's utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquility will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I'll be able to realize them!" Saturday, 15 July 1944.

3."I think spring is inside me. I feel spring awakening, I feel it in my entire body and soul. I have to force myself to act normally. I'm in a state of utter confusion, don't know what to read, what to write, what to do. I only know that I'm longing for something..." Saturday, 12 Februrary 1944.

4. "I don't have much in the way of money or worldly possessions, I'm not beautiful, intelligent or clever, but I'm happy, and I intend to stay that way! I was born happy, I love people, I have a trusting nature, and I'd like everyone else to be happy too." Saturday, 25 March 1944.

5. "I've asked myself again and again whether it wouldn't have been better if we hadn't gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn't have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven't yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for... everything." Friday, 26 May 1944.

6. "When everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be and what I could be if... if only there were no other people in the world." Tuesday, 1 August 1944.

7. "I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death!" Wednesday, 5 April 1944.

8. "Riches, prestige, everything can be lost. But the happiness in your own heart can only be dimmed; it will always be there, as long as you live, to make you happy again." Wednesday, 23 February, 'Thoughts: To Peter'.

9. "I have the feeling that Peter and I share a secret. Whenever he looks at me with those eyes, with that smile and that wink, it's as if a light goes on inside me. I hope things will stay like this and that we'll have many, many more happy hours together." Sunday, 19 March 1944.

10. "Despite all my theories and efforts, I miss - every day and every hour of the day - having a mother who understands me. That's why with everything I do and write, I imagine the kind of mum I'd like to be to my children later on." Friday, 24 December 1943.

More Literary Quotes

1. "Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." - from Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen.

2. "What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy." - from The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger.

3. "I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system - that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up." - from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

4. "These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life." - from The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

5. "Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love." - from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

6. "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde.

7. "Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you - haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe - I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! Only do not leave me in the abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannnot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!" - from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë .

8. "His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy." - from Lord Of The Flies by William Golding.

9. "The heaventree of stars hung with humid night-blue fruit." - from Ulysses by James Joyce.

10. "Every now and then a clear harmonic cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men's souls to joy." - from On The Road by Jack Kerouac.

Literary Quotes

From novels, plays and suchlike. This will probably be one of many installments. I quite like quotes, you see...

1. "There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. But omitted, and the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves - or lose the ventures before us." - from 'Julius Caeser' by William Shakespeare.

2. "The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice." - from 'Vanity Fair' by William Makepeace Thackeray.

3. "Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad." - from 'To Kill A Mockingbird' by Harper Lee.

4. "In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's." - from 'Silas Marner' by George Eliot.

5. "It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded." - from 'Of Human Bondage' by W. Somerset Maugham.

6. "My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees - my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath - a source of little visible delight, but necessary." - from 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Bronte.

7. "No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true." - from 'The Scarlett Letter' by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

8. "He could not forget the touch of her arms around his neck, impatiently felt as it had been at the time; but now the recollection of her clinging defence of him, seemed to thrill him through and through - to melt away every resolution, all power of self-control, as if it were wax before a fire." - from 'North and South' by Elizabeth Gaskell.

9. "A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man." - from 'Howards End' by E.M. Forster.

10. "Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun." - from 'Romeo and Juliet' by William Shakespeare.