Great lines in Literature

[cheerful_deviant]

"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes." ~ Douglas Adams, Life the Universe and Everything


This may very well be one of the most original lines ever printed. It's so stupid it absolutly brilliant. Douglas was truly a gifted man.


Anyone else have a favorite? (from any book)

 

[Guest]

My favorite right now is from the play we're doing. Our Town.

Emily says (after realizing she cannot go back): "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? - every, every minute?"

And the Stage Managers tells her, gently: "No."

He pauses, then, "The saints and poets, maybe. They do some."

 

[Guest]

Until you lose your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.

~ Margaret Mitchell

what a brilliant woman.

 

[Trinique_Fire]

My favorite right now is from the play we're doing. Our Town.

Emily says (after realizing she cannot go back): "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? - every, every minute?"

And the Stage Managers tells her, gently: "No."

He pauses, then, "The saints and poets, maybe. They do some."

Yes...this one is beautiful. I saw Our Town as a little little girl and cried even then.

Good one Sarah...

 

[Trinique_Fire]

Not quite famous literature, but from a wonderful book called Lucky In The Corner

"My greatest accomplishment in life is my impersonation of sane."

 

[cantdog]

People talk a lot about individual freedom. But show 'em a free individual, and they get scared.

 

[Liar]

"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes." ~ Douglas Adams, Life the Universe and Everything

I call your Douglas and raise you another Douglas:

"It’s not the fall that kills you; it’s the sudden stop at the end."

 

[SesameStreet]

"Get busy living or get busy dying." Stephen King - The Shawshank Redemption

 

[neonlyte]

John Irving - "Until I Find You" (2005)

Scene: Young Jack, aged 4, and illigitimate son of an infamous 'love them and leave them' father, has just been admitted to an all girl academy. His mentor, Emma, aged 13, old enough to be seriously curious about 'boys' has already decided she will help Jack turn into adulthood - just in case he turns out to be equal to his father. As she holds him to her budding breast and carries him into the school, she says:

"Nice tushy, Jack."

"Nice moustache, Emma," replied Jack, fascinated by blond hairs on her upper lip.

 

[R. Richard]

Well, the line I recal is not exactly literature. It was used by a semi-illiterate man I sometines worked with back when I collected money for the man. His simple statement summed up the oeuvre perfectly:

"If I have to come back again, I'll break your other arm."

 

[matriarch]

"Perhaps the high water mark of my childhood was the night the bed fell on my father."


This is the first line of the short story "The Night the Bed Fell" by James Thurber,

 

[matriarch]

"Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts."


This is a line from Shakespeare's play "King Henry VI".

 

[matriarch]

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

This line is from "Animal Farm", by George Orwell (real name Eric Blair.)

I'll stop now.

 

[snowy ciara]

I re-read Phantom, by Susan Kay on the plane sunday. Here are two of my favorite lines from it.

"None of us can choose where we will love." - Erik

"But people will have been killed!"
"Oh yes...I daresay that's quite likely. It's really quite difficult to be a murderer without killing people from time to time, you know." - Erik

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Three by Raymond Chandler from The Big Sleep

"I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it."

"Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her."

"Dead men are heavier than broken hearts."

Rumple Foreskin