Post your favorite literature quotes here!

[improvident]

No Damn cat. No Damn cradle....

Kurt Vonnegut-Cat's Cradle

[Jimmy the Pro]

Do you like green eggs and ham?

Author Unknown

[tinybear]

Green Eggs and Ham - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Jimmy the Pro]

Twas a small joke Tiny, I now who wrote it

[PatrickHenry]

Subcomandante Marcos

In the mountains of Chiapas, death was a part of daily life. It was as common as rain or sunshine. People here coexist with death, death of their own, especially the little ones. Paradoxically, death begins to shed its tragic cloak, Death becomes a daily fact. It loses its sacredness. You see it as someone you sit down with at the table, like an old acquaintance. You don't lose your fear of death, but you become familiar with it. It becomes your equal. Death, which is so close, so near, so possible, is less terrifying for us than for others. So, going out and fighting and perhaps meeting death is not as terrible as it seems. For us, at least. In fact, what surprises and amazes us is life itself. The hope of a better life. Going out to fight and to die finding out you're not dead, but alive. And, unintentionally, you realize you are walking on the edge of the border between death and life. You're walking on the edge of the border between them.

[gw120]

The most truth-ridden sentence pen ever put to paper:

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers. - Thomas Pynchon

also

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. - Plato

[tinybear]

"When he got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the first spray of it in its advance had begun to overwhelm the city.

Waste forces within him and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. "

Charles Dickens, A Tale Of Two Cities

[CoffeeSaint]

"Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging, and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.

The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth."

--Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[tinybear]

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

Everybody knows where this comes from...

[CoffeeSaint]

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

Everybody knows where this comes from...

Yup, Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel Paul Clifford.


Here's the full quote:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

Sheer genius!

[tinybear]

Gosh! And I thought it was this guy who wrote "It was A Dark And Stormy Night".