Share a quote from what you're reading...

[Reggia]

This is the place to share those funny, wise or poignant quotes from your current book; it may just be something that you found interesting or related to in some way. Please share it here. Who knows, you may inspire one of us to read it for ourselves. :) Try to keep them short (one or two sentences) and be sure to give us the book title & author, too. Have fun!

[[deleted user]]

"Do you play cards?" Mrs Thorley asked.
"The whist?" Not goot."

Gad's Hall
Norah Lofts

[[deleted user]]

Start of A Wayside Tavern by Norah Lofts

"And as the cock crew, those who stood before The Tavern shouted - "Open then the door!"
You know how little time we have to stay.
And, once departed, may return no more"

Omar Khayyam

...the present, like a note in music is nothing save as it pertains to the past and what is to come.
Walter Savage Landor

in front of A Wayside Tavern

[[deleted user]]

from The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

from poem:
The time will come when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome.

Derek Walcott

[Reggia]

“I’ll bet,” said Sancho, “you knew what I was saying and understood me from the beginning, but wanted to mix me up so you could hear me make another two hundred mistakes.” ~from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

[Reggia]

Ours is not the first era to equate money and happiness. The ancient Greeks, while contributing much to civilization, were not above good old-fashioned avarice. “The early Greeks spoke of the gods as …blessed or happy- not least because of their material prosperity,” writes Darrin McMahon in his excellent history of happiness. And so it went. Throughout the ages and around the world, people paid lip service to that old saw about money not buying happiness and then proceeded to act precisely as if it does. ~from Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

[Reggia]

Alice, I'm curious to know which quote is from Omar Khayyam, and if it was in one of the Tavern books?

[Rhonda]

We couldn't understand because we were too far... and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, those ages that had gone, leaving hardly a sign...and no memories.

Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad

[[deleted user]]

Reggia wrote: "Alice, I'm curious to know which quote is from Omar Khayyam, and if it was in one of the Tavern books?"

Norah Lofts posted that in her book: A Wayside Tavern which is one of my favorite NL books. Its a the beginning. As Cassie said in my group the book starts out wonderful but loses a little at the end.

[Reggia]

Thanks, Alice, that was how you posted it (having foggy brain lately). I guess that comes from the Rubaiyat -- have a borrowed copy from the library.

Nice quote, Rhonda!

[[deleted user]]

Oh, Norah Lofts didn't put that in her book. I am going to add some more questions from her books tonight to the neverending quiz.

[Reggia]

I'm confused: didn't you just say that she did post that quote in the beginning of her book, A Wayside Tavern?

[Reggia]

"She had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels."

"When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine."

~both from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

[[deleted user]]

Reggia wrote: "I'm confused: didn't you just say that she did post that quote in the beginning of her book, A Wayside Tavern?

Yes, I read it in the front of Norah Lofts book. I do not unfortunately own any books by Omar Khayyam so if Norah Lofts hadn't put the quote I would never have read it. I do wish I owned a book by him.

[Reggia]

"Of course, Berlin is a city of the future."

"But what about the past?"

"You have to make peace with the past to get on with the future." She smiled. "I live with my ghosts here. I keep them company. They like that."

Hope watched the children playing on the jungle gym. For the first time she noticed that this playground had been built in a bombed-out lot.

~from This Must Be the Place by Anna Winger

[[deleted user]]

Following the Sun A Bicycle Pilgrimage From Andalusia to the Hebrides

- Above all Brother Sun
Who brings us the day and lends us his light.
St. Francis of Assisi: The Song of Brother Sun and of All His Creatures

[[deleted user]]

Following the Sun A Bicycle Pilgrimage From Andalusia to the Hebrides

"I related stories from my pilgrimage, and in contrast to many of the people I had met along the way, they all heartily approved of my plan to go to Scotland, a place that virtually all southern Europeans seemed to hold in horror, as if it were the repository of all the cold ills of all the frozen worlds. Chretien and his family thought it a great lark.
"Instant death," Chretien shouted. "wonderful. It's a place for you to die. YOu will freeze. It is said to be a painless death, freezing."
"But before you die you will have to eat sheep belly stuffed with oatmeal," M Berger said, laying a finger aside of his nose. "That will be worse than death."

[[deleted user]]

from Leo Buscaglia -

"I realize how apt a symbol wine is of life, for it represents sap, vigor, vitality and continuity.

Jean-Paul Kauffman

This is from the chapter - Papa, the Oenophile

[[deleted user]]

Main Entry: oe·no·phile
Pronunciation: \ˈē-nə-ˌfī(-ə)l\
Function: noun
Etymology: French œnophile, from œno- (from Greek oinos wine) + -phile -phile — more at wine
Date: 1930
: a lover or connoisseur of wine

I had to look this up as reading the chapter about them making wine in the garage! Papa, My Father A Celebration of Dads

[Rhonda]

It may be true that the world as it stands is no illusion, no evil dream of a night. It may be that we wake up to it ineluctably, that we can neither forget it nor dispense with it. But I find it as hard as ever to believe that the end is near. If the barbarians were to burst in now, I know, I would die in my bed as stupid and ignorant as a baby.

Waiting for the Barbarians
J.M. Coetze

[[deleted user]]

Oh, Rhonda that sounds very scary!

[Rhonda]

The agnosticism at the heart of the French republic would facilitate the progressive, hypocritical and slightly sinister triumph of the materialist worldview. Though never overtly discussed, the question of the value of human life would nonetheless continue to occupy people's minds. It would be true to say that in the last years of Western civilization it contributed to a general mood of depression bordering on masochism.

The Elementary Particles
Michel Houellebecq

[Reggia]

"Letters with moral merit," she said to Charlie, "are often very dull. Humour, Charlie, usually needs a victim.

~from The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday by Alexander McCall Smith

[Anita]

I love it when i run across those phrases in books that make me stop and want to remember them. The latest one is from the book "The Spanish Game" by Charles Cumming (a great book, btw). It's the story of a young, and somewhat misguided, spy. I got the book from the library so I don't have it with me at the moment but the phrase (which is quite quotable I think!) went something like this:
"The first thing you should know about people is that you don't know the first thing about them."
So true... (!)

[Rhonda]

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.
D H Lawrence
Lady Chatterly's Lover

[Reggia]

(upon his decision that he should marry, and who should be the lucky recipient)

Mr Stryver having made up his mind to that magnanimous bestowal of good fortune on the Doctor's daughter, resolved to make her happiness known to her before he left town for the Long Vacation. After some mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his hand a week or two before Michaelmas Term...

[Rhonda]

Oooh! You have to admire someone who can tackle Tale of Two Cities these days:)

[Nicole]

Someday I plan to tackle it. Someday.

I have to share this chapter title from Breaking Dawn (by Stephenie Meyer):

"Why didn’t I just walk away? Oh right. Because I’m an idiot."

[Karyn]

'Liir, really, you pick the most awkward times to develop character,'

Gregory Maguire
Wicked, the life and times of the wicked witch of the west

[Vicky]

Mystical knowledge is not acquired through hearing about it or by continually reading books but through the generous infusion of the divine spirit, whose grace is communicated with delightful intimacy to the simple and uneducated . The spiritual Guide -by Miguel de Molinos .

[Reggia]

Rhonda said: Oooh! You have to admire someone who can tackle Tale of Two Cities these days:)

LOL Rhonda, you deserve even more admiration, as looking more closely at it, I realized I left out the quote source and yet you recognized it. Kudos! :)

[Vicky]

Emblems of Jealousy: Act 1 Scene 1 Camillo.Sicila cannot show himself over-kind to Bohemia. They were trained together in their childhoods; and there rooted betwixt them then such an affection which cannot choose but branch now. Since their more mature dignities and royal necessities made separation of their society,their encounters,though not personal, hath been royally attorneyed with interchange of gifts,letters,loving embassies;that they have seemed to be together ,though absent,shook hands as over a vast, and embraced , as it were, from the ends of opposed winds . The heavens continue their loves! "The Winter's Tale" Shakespeare
(O-kay time to get that mediterrian tan .)

[Reggia]

We had more than enough material without them, and my predicament was the just punishment of that most fatal of human follies, our not having known when to stop.

~The Aspern Papers by Henry James

[Werner]

"'The people who wrote the medieval ballads,' answered the priest, 'knew more about fairies than you do. It isn't only nice things that happen in fairyland.... I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous.'" --Gilbert Keith Chesterton, "The Sins of Prince Saradine."

[[deleted user]]

Bent's Fort Kit Carson's Brother-in-Law - "During the beginning rumbles of the Texian affray, Mexican officials took an unhappy look at the northern boundaries of New Mexico. To bolster with a fringe of protective settlements and also to stimulate the development of the backward province, the govermnet decided to introduce a policy already familiar in Texas and CAlifornia - the granting of enormous tracts of land to individuals who seemed able to establish colonies and promote agriculture. Applications were invited, but few native New Mexicans were willing to risk, even for almost unimaginable acreage, the isolation and the Indians. The foreigners were more ambitious. There was at least one of them included in almost every grant issued between 1841 and 1844 - though, to be sure, each of these foreigners met the letter of Mexican law by being a naturalized citizen.

[Werner]

"If you are ever faced with this choice, are you willing to die for what you believe in? ...It's a difficult question and not one you can answer until you're faced with it. Keep in mind that many people have died for their beliefs; it's actually quite common. The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe." --Christopher Paolini, Eragon.

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Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

"If you clear a forest, you'd better pray continuously."

[[deleted user]]

"What cracker is this that deafes our eares with this abundance of superfluous breath?"

[Werner]

"'Three days of frightful suffering and then death! Why, that might suddenly, at any time, happen to me,' he thought, and for a moment felt terrified. But --he did not himself know how-- the customary reflection at once occurred to him that this had happened to Ivan Ilych and not to him, and that to think that it could would be yielding to depression which he ought not to do... After which reflection Peter Ivanovich felt reassured, and began to ask with interest about the details of Ivan Ilych's death, as though death was an accident natural to Ivan Ilych but certainly not to himself." --Leo Tolstoy, "The Death of Ivan Ilych."

[Nicole]

"It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull."
--Arthur Conan Doyle in The Hound of the Baskervilles

[Werner]

"As a young boy, I was not afraid of the dark. As an old man, I am wiser."

"So I sit alone on the patio in Paul's backyard (why was it, I try to recall, that we turned our focus away from the front porch attention to the communal streets and sidewalks into the fenced isolation of our own backyards?)"

"My great-grandchildren are as colorful and mindless as the guppies Paul keeps in his expensive aquarium, free from the terrors and tides of the ocean of history, smug in their almost total ignorance of everything that came before themselves, Big Macs, and MTV."

--Dan Simmons, "Iverson's Pits"

[Werner]

"It is not judicious to tell a man that he is a maniac, especially when there is a likelihood that he is one."

--John William DeForrest, "The Drummer Ghost"

[Werner]

"You and me, everybody, we're a set of stories, and what those stories are is what makes us what we are. Same thing for whites as skins. Same thing for a tribe and a city and a nation and the world. It's all these stories and how they braid together that tells us who and what and where we are. We got to stop forgetting and get back to remembering.... there's nobody can give you back your pride. You've got to take it back yourself."

--Charles de Lint, "Coyote Stories"

[Nicole]

"Honey, I liked the Harry Potter movies, too, but that doesn’t mean I ran out and got the Dark Mark tattooed onto my left forearm like you did."
-- Jim Butcher in "Day Off"

[[deleted user]]

"When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy."

-Lord Henry, The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

[Reggia]

I always enjoy reading these quotes -- thanks for taking the time to share!

[Nicole]

The library was full of wizards, who care about their books in the same way ants care about their eggs and in time of difficulty carry them around in much the same way.
--Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

[Christa]

"...that of all the propensities which teach mankind to torment themselves, that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, painful, and pitiable." - Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy

[Werner]

"...a girl who'll deliberately throw herself at two loaded guns doesn't have to comb her hair to earn my respect, no matter what her politics." --Donald Hamilton, Death of a Citizen

[Margaret]

"What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever." -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventure of the Cardboard Box