Quill / Moments / Literary quotes
Literary quotes
A line from a novel or a play has usually been said by someone with a reason. Macbeth isn't speaking for Shakespeare, and a sentence in Middlemarch may be George Eliot gently teasing a character.
That's the pleasure of this collection, and the catch. Where you can, read the page around a line with Read in Context. The sentence often gets stranger and better once you know who said it, and to whom.
From the books
Checked word for word against public-domain editions.
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything.
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Brothers, have no fear of men’s sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of …
Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.
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Whose end is purpos’d by the mighty gods? Yet Caesar shall go forth; for these predictions Are to the world in general as to Caesar. CALPHURNIA. When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. CAESAR. Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear, Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come. Enter Servant. What say the augurers? SERVANT. They would not have you to stir forth today.
To love beauty is to see the light.
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The ideal is nothing but the culminating point of logic, the same as the beautiful is nothing but the summit of the true. Artistic peoples are also consistent peoples. To love beauty is to see the light. That is why the torch of Europe, that is to say of civilization, was first borne by Greece, who passed it on to Italy, who handed it on to France. Divine, illuminating nations of scouts! Vitælampada tradunt.
Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.
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… a short time before. He liked saying “Bathsheba” as a private enjoyment instead of whistling; turned over his taste to black hair, though he had sworn by brown ever since he was a boy, isolated himself till the space he filled in the public eye was contemptibly small. Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants. Oak began now to see light in this direction, and said to himself, “I’ll make her my wife, or upon my soul I …
Do not wait for life to be picturesque, but try and see life under picturesque conditions.
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Do not wait for life to be picturesque, but try and see life under picturesque conditions. These conditions you can create for yourself in your studio, for they are merely conditions of light. In nature, you must wait for them, watch for them, choose them; and, if you wait and watch, come they will.
One must travel, to learn.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
You want nothing but patience—or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.
We were born to strive and endure—you as well as I: do so.
Come, come, my young cousins, begin afresh!
To be in love is to surpass one’s self.
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Leave all else to time, truth, and steadfastness.
Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.
Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
First study; then approve; then love.
If not today, why then tomorrow.
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.
Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.
We are such stuff As dreams are made on.
One’s own life—that is the important thing.
Events and time do not wait.
Courage mounteth with occasion.
You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.
Habit is the great motive-power.
New things spring into life every day.
Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.
The great thing is the education of character.
You must be the best judge of your own happiness.
We can never be really parted.
You must call up all your fortitude, and try to bear it.
Say what you have to say, not what you ought.
Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.
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