Wednesday 31 March 2021

Great lines from classic books

Fans of the classics will love this collection curated by the Viewtale review team.

They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels. - Kate Chopin, The Awakening

I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it. - J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same—everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same—people who had never learned to think but who were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world. - George Orwell, 1984

Ever’body’s askin’ that. “What we comin’ to?” Seems to me we don’t never come to nothin’. Always on the way. - John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

The Mole was a good listener, and Toad, with no one to check his statements or to criticize in an unfriendly spirit, rather let himself go. Indeed, much that he related belonged more properly to the category of what-might-have-happened-had-I-only-thought-of-it-in-time-instead-of-ten-minutes-afterwards. - Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. - Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

And they beat. The women for having known them and no more, no more; the children for having been them but never again. They killed a boss so often and so completely they had to bring him back to life to pulp him one more time. Tasting hot mealcake among pine trees, they beat it away. Singing love songs to Mr. Death, they smashed his head. More than the rest, they killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on. - Toni Morrison, Beloved

I saw within Its depth how It conceives All things in a single volume bound by Love of which the universe is the scattered leaves. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

And again she felt alone in the presence of her old antagonist, life. - Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

It was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness. - Albert Camus, The Stranger

A certain pride, a certain awe, withheld him from offering to God even one prayer at night, though he knew it was in God’s power to take away his life while he slept and hurl his soul hellward ere he could beg for mercy. - James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion. - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion. - Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

It is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance. - Franz Kafka, The Trial

The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames. - Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Who then may trust the dice, at Fortune’s throw? - Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

If you love reading the classics, why not jump over to Viewtale and take a read through all the great eBooks and podcasts on offer?

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