Been a while since I last did a meme, so here’s one from The Broke and The Bookish.
Top 10 Favourite Quotes from Books
10. Nick Hornby in High Fidelity:
A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You’ve got to kick off with a killer, to grab the attention. Then you’ve got to take it up a notch, or cool it off a notch… oh, there are a lot of rules.
9. Fyodor Dostoyevsky in White Nights and Other Stories:
I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
8. George Orwell in Animal Farm:
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
7. David Levithan in The Lover’s Dictionary:
flux, n.
The natural state. Our moods change. Our lives change. Our feelings for each other change. Our bearings change. The song changes. The air changes. The temperature of the shower changes.
Accept this. We must accept this.
6. Daniel Kehlmann in Die Vermessung der Welt:
Wer weit reise, sagte er, erfahre viele Dinge. Ein paar davon über sich selbst.
5. Lord Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb, in Love Letters of Great Men edited by Ursula Doyle:
- If the tears, which you saw, and I know I am not apt to shed; if the agitation in which I parted from you – agitation which you must have perceived through the whole of this nervous affair, did not commence till the moment of leaving you approached; if all I have said and done, and am still but too ready to say and do, have not sufficiently proved what my feelings are, and must ever be, towards you, my love, I have no other proof to offer.
4. Ethan Hawke in The Hottest State:
Don’t you find it odd,” she continued, “that when you’re a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you’re older, somehow they act offended if you even try.”
3. Erich Kästner in Als ich ein kleiner Junge war:
Wenn ein Kind lesen gelernt hat und gerne liest, entdeckt und erobert es eine zweite Welt, das Reich der Buchstaben. Das Land des Lesens ist ein geheimnisvoller, unendlicher Erdteil. Aus Druckerschwärze entstehen Dinge, Menschen, Geister und Götter, die man sonst nicht sehen könnte. Wer noch nicht lesen kann, sieht nur, was greifbar vor seiner Nase liegt oder steht (…) Wer lesen kann, sitzt über einem Buch und erblickt mit einem Male den Kilimandscharo oder Karl den Großen oder Huckleberry Finn im Gebüsch oder Zeus als Stier, und auf seinem Rücken reitet die schöne Europa. Wer lesen kann, hat ein zweites Paar Augen, und er muss nur aufpassen, dass er sich dabei das erste Paar nicht verdirbt.
2. Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being:
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?
1. Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love:
There’s a reason we refer to “leaps of faith” -because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don’t care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn’t. If faith were rational, it wouldn’t be -by definition- faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be… a prudent insurance policy.
Let me know if you decide to do this meme too!
