Lines in literature that make you stop and think. (Page 2 of 3)

“I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.” ― George Eliot

“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.” ― George Eliot

“A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.” ― George Eliot

Marian to her friends...

VIOLATION!!!!

Yep. That's the way she'd have preferred it, I think. Currer Bell (later revealed as Charlotte Bronte) as well:

Which speaks to your point in another thread.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom Charles Bell tolls; he trolls for thee.

“If I had a brother in jail and one in Georgia, I'd try to bust the one out of Georgia first.” —Charles Frazier

x

I read George Orwell's 1984 as a teenager for school course work and I found it stirring and evocative in the 'what if?' sense.

I re-read it recently in middle-age as my son studies the same novel during his English Literature course work at school. (The self same novel within the self same classroom/school that I attended).

I was astounded re-reading 1984. It has to be the most prophetic book of all time. What was once evocative is now chilling in it's prophetic accuracy.

"What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
     Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
          We will grieve not, rather find
          Strength in what remains behind;
          In the primal sympathy
          Which having been must ever be;
          In the soothing thoughts that spring
          Out of human suffering;
          In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And 0, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish’d one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway;
I love the brooks which down their channels fret
Even more than when I tripp’d lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
               Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
   Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
   Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
   To me the meanest flower that blows can give
   Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

- from Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood - William Wordsworth