Lines in literature that make you stop and think. (Page 1 of 3)

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes.

  Seven Pillars of Wisdom by  T.E. Lawrence.

“Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”

The Things They Carried by Tim O'brien

xxx

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.”

- Lord Byron

He stared up at the stars: and it seemed to him then that they were dancers, stately and graceful, performing a dance almost infinite in its complexity. He imagined he could see the very faces of the stars; pale, they were, and smiling gently, as if they had spent so much time above the world, watching the scrambling and the joy and the pain of the people below them, that they could not help being amused every time another little human believed itself the center of its world, as each of us does.

Another from an oft read bedtime story, a passionate favourite of my younger daughter who was very much away with the fairies. She loved (loves) the enigma and enchantment of a fairy story and this one has it all; romance; witches and spells; beautiful princesses pitching good against evil (whereas the other daughter prefers a more earthy ‘hobbit-like’ fantasy within her fiction).   

Not too much of a chore to read this one if I’m honest. I do like the language of the long sentence and the ethereal nature of the wonderment within this novel. Too be honest it’s a corker and with some of the most beautiful prose to be read, one that you don’t hear too much about (compared to say Harry Potter).

“You know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn't true. I know a lot about love. I've seen it, centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars. Pain, lies, hate... It made me want to turn away and never look down again. But when I see the way that mankind loves... You could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and... What I'm trying to say, Tristan is... I think I love you. Is this love, Tristan? I never imagined I'd know it for myself. My heart... It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it's trying to escape because it doesn't belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I'd wish for nothing in exchange - no gifts. No goods. No demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine.”

There are literally hundreds of wonderful passages within this novel, far too many to reproduce…

They kissed for the first time then in the cold spring rain, though neither one of them now knew that it was raining. Tristran's heart pounded in his chest as if it was not big enough to contain all the joy that it held. He opened his eyes as he kissed the star. Her sky-blue eyes stared back into his, and in her eyes he could see no parting from her.

                                                            -----

“The squirrel has not yet found the acorn that will grow into the oak that will be cut to form the cradle of the babe that will grow to slay me.”

                                                        -----

“Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at the stars because we are human?”

                                                            -----     

It was sometimes said that the grey-and-black mountain range which ran like a spine north to south down that part of Faerie had once been a giant, who grew so huge and so heavy that, one day, worn out from the sheer effort of moving and living, he had stretched out on the plain and fallen into a sleep so profound that centuries passed between heartbeats.
                                     
And one that should go into the best openings thread for a wonderful alternative to the ‘once upon a time’ opening line.

“There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire.”

There's a movie of the book. My daughter Holly actually wore out her DVD of this film and we had to replace it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfYBKDyF-Dk

I never minded so much, watching it with her on those rainy Sunday evenings. Mainly because of Michelle Pfeiffer who is some kind of wonderful.

Oh, and a song, a track from the film. She drove us crazy performing her karaoke of this constantly for about two years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfwneeyGFek

Although, the very best thing is the prose in the book, truly good and worth a read for it's own sake, despite the YA genre.

"We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine."

E.M. Forster A Room With A View

"Her heart of compressed ash, which had resisted the most telling blows of daily reality without strain, fell apart with the first waves of nostalgia."
-  Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

"The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." - John Milton

(I'm reading the first couple books of Paradise Lost for a class. This line jumped out.)

“Do you know—I hardly remembered you?”
“Hardly remembered me?”
“I mean: how shall I explain? I—it’s always so. Each time you happen to me all over again.“

-Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“And what is writ, is writ,
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been.”
― George Gordon Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage