Classics Quotes

All is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most… .

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Don't play with others, or at one day, you will be played by others.

~ Usama Ejaz

I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.

~ Charles Bukowski

Now life is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that's the basis of the whole deception. Now man is still not what he should be. There will e a new man, happy and proud. Whoever doesn't care whether he lives or doesn't live, he himself will be God. And that other God will no longer be.''So, that other God does exist, in your opinion?''He doesn't exist, but he does exist. In the stone there' no pain, but in the fear of the stone there is pain. God is the pain of the fear of death. Whoever conquers pain and fear will himself become God.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You're on your own little quest, an there's a bit of Frodo Baggins in you, and a bit of Verne's Paganel, and just a tiny drop of Robinson Cursoe, and a smidgeon of Radishchev.

~ Sergei Lukyanenko

There is no life here but the slow death of days, and so when the evil falls on the town, its coming seems almost preordained, sweet and morphic. It is almost as though the town knows the evil was coming and the shape it would take.

~ Stephen King

The town knew about darkness. It knew about the darkness that comes on the land when rotation hides the land from the sun, and about the darkness of the human soul. The town is an accumulation of three parts which, in sum, are greater than the sections. The town is the people who live there, the buildings which they have erected to den or do business in, and it is the land.

~ Stephen King

and love is a word usedtoo much andmuchtoo soon.

~ Charles Bukowski

It is noteworthy, the researcher further argued, that the inscription on the sword was engraved in the Romanian language, and, consequently, we see that Latin was actually Romanian, and not the invented language that for many centuries has passed for ancient Latin.

~ Vladimir Lorchenkov

They too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape; they'd had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not their home.

~ Donna Tartt

The Biblical language was so deeply embedded in the great man's mind that it became his normal way of speaking.

~ Elton Trueblood

I tell you I must go!” I retorted, roused to something like passion. “Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we are!

~ Charlotte Brontë

Nothing is Lie until you get to know the truth, as nothing is false in Dream until you get to know that i'm Dreamer.

~ The Ek

Truth is such a rare thing it is delightful to tell it

~ Emily Dickinson

What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering. For weeks, Marianne, I've had this pressing on me without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature. It was forced on me by the very person whose prior claims ruined all my hope. I have endured her exultations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.

~ Jane Austen

And when long years and seasons wheeling brought around that point of time ordained for him to make his passage homeward, trials and dangers, even so, attended him even in Ithaca, near those he loved.

~ Homer

I have a Greek-American friend who named her daughter Nike and is often asked why she chose to name her offspring after a sneaker.

~ Rebecca Goldstein

By reading older books we get a taste of the conversation of Heaven.

~ John Mark Reynolds

Either I'm changing very quickly, and everything is standing still, or I'm the one standing still and everything is changing around me. Either way, I'm out of joint with the world.

~ Bernie Su

I laughed at him as he said this. “I am not an angel,” I asserted; “and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me—for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.

~ Charlotte Brontë

In the make-up of human beings, intelligence counts for more than our hands, and that is our true strength.

~ Ovid

I've never met anyone as kind as you are, except me Mum, o' course. --Benjamin Trimmel to Lady Alexandra.

~ Lisa M. Prysock

Think of this- that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.

~ A.s. Byatt

I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.

~ A.s. Byatt

And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre.

~ George Orwell

If there really is such a thing as turning in one's grave, Shakespeare must get a lot of exercise.

~ George Orwell

Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as whenThe bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,Her ashes new-create another heirAs great in admiration as herself.

~ William Shakespeare

Upon the publication of Goethe’s epic drama, the Faustian legend had reached an almost unapproachable zenith. Although many failed to appreciate, or indeed, to understand this magnum opus in its entirety, from this point onward his drama was the rule by which all other Faust adaptations were measured. Goethe had eclipsed the earlier legends and became the undisputed authority on the subject of Faust in the eyes of the new Romantic generation. To deviate from his path would be nothing short of blasphemy.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

- Ay! Thornton o' Marlborough Mill, as we call him.- He is one of the masters you are striving with, is he not? what sort of master is he? - Did yo' ever see a bulldog? Set a bulldog on hindlegs, and dress him up in coat and breeches, and yo'n just getten John Thornton.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

When I say to the Moment flying;'Linger a while -- thou art so fair!'Then bind me in thy bonds undying,And my final ruin I will bear!

~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Our fathers fought bravely. But do you know the biggest weapon unleashed by the enemy against them? It was not the Maxim gun. It was division among them. Why? Because a people united in faith are stronger than the bomb

~ Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o

He was sixty years old, his backbone had been as straight as his gun, his spirit-as straight as his backbone.

~ Ayn Rand

In any case how many took the oath and are now licking the toes of the whiteman?No, you take an oath to confirm a choice already made. The decision to lay or not lay your life for the people lies in the heart. The oath is the water sprinkled on a man's head at baptism

~ Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o

When sonneteering Wordsworth re-creates the landing of Mary Queen of Scots at the mouth of the Derwent -Dear to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed,The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore- he unveils nothing less than a canvas by Rubens, baroque master of baroque masters; this is the landing of a TRAGIC Marie de Medicis.Yet so receptive was the English ear to sheep-Wordsworth's perverse 'Enough of Art' that it is not any of these works of supreme art, these master-sonnets of English literature, that are sold as picture postcards, with the text in lieu of the view, in the Lake District! it is those eternally, infernally sprightly Daffodils.

~ Brigid Brophy

I shall never be converted, and I shall remain true to my old religion of the classics until my life's end.

~ Richard Strauss

Like a girl, a baby running after her mother, begging to be picked up, and she tugs on her skirts, holding her back as she tries to hurry off—all tears, fawning up at her, till she takes her in her arms… That’s how you look, Patroclus, streaming live tears.

~ Homer

And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever. Therefore as portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men, and while I endeavor by these to portray their lives, may be free to leave more weighty matters and great battles to be treated of by others.

~ Plutarch

A classic is read not to enjoy but only to be boast about it.

~ Aman Jassal

And is not all of life material- based on the material- permeated by the material? Should not one learn, gladly, to utilize the beauty of the fine material? I do not speak of the gross crudities of soporific television, of loud brash convertibles and vulgar display- but rather of grace and line and refinement- and there are wonderful and exciting things that only money can buy, such as theater tickets, books, paintings, travel, lovely clothes- and why deny them when one can have them? The only problem is to work, to stay awake mentally and physically, and NEVER become mentally, physically, spiritually flabby or over complacent!

~ Elizabeth Winder

When Henry handed her a cup of punch she whispered, If you want to go on with the seniors or anything I'll be alright.Henry smiled at her. You're my date, Scout.

~ Harper Lee