Mcljess > Mcljess's Quotes

“O God, make me good, but not yet.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“Himmlisch ist's, wenn ich bezwugen
Meine irdische Begier;
Aber doch wenn's nicht gelungen,
Hatt' ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir!"*

*"Splendid if I overcome
My earthy passion,
But if I succeed not,
Still I have known happiness!”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Under the trees several pheasants lay about, their rich plumage dabbled with blood; some were dead, some feebly twitching a wing, some staring up at the sky, some pulsating quickly, some contorted, some stretched out—all of them writhing in agony except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to bear more. With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as much as for herself, Tess’s first thought was to put the still living birds out of their torture, and to this end with her own hands she broke the necks of as many as she could find, leaving them to lie where she had found them till the gamekeepers should come, as they probably would come, to look for them a second time. “Poor darlings—to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth in the sight o’ such misery as yours!” she exclaimed, her tears running down as she killed the birds tenderly.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“That’s the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.”
― Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

“Badger hates Society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Language is the source of misunderstandings.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Everything in this room is edible. Even I'm edible. But, that would be called canibalism. It is looked down upon in most societies.”
― Tim Burton, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

“for her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Red-Headed League

“Why is love intensified by absence?”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

“On every formal visit a child ought to be of the party, by way of provision for discourse.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch as which?" and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about.”
― A.A. Milne , Winnie-the-Pooh

“A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play;”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“He frequently observed, as he walked out, that one handsome face would be followed by thirty, or five-and-thirty frights; and once, as he stood in a shop in Bond Street, he had counted eighty-seven women go by, one after another, without there being a tolerable face among them.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Lennie begged, "Le's do it now. Le's get that place now."
"Sure right now. I gotta. We gotta.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“In Hope.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“For the future. For the unborn.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“That wasn't why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“What I need... is a strong drink and a peer group.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“I'm staying right here," grumbled the rat. "I haven't the slightest interest in fairs."
"That's because you've never been to one," remarked the old sheep . "A fair is a rat's paradise. Everybody spills food at a fair. A rat can creep out late at night and have a feast. In the horse barn you will find oats that the trotters and pacers have spilled. In the trampled grass of the infield you will find old discarded lunch boxes containing the foul remains of peanut butter sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, cracker crumbs, bits of doughnuts, and particles of cheese. In the hard-packed dirt of the midway, after the glaring lights are out and the people have gone home to bed, you will find a veritable treasure of popcorn fragments, frozen custard dribblings, candied apples abandoned by tired children, sugar fluff crystals, salted almonds, popsicles,partially gnawed ice cream cones,and the wooden sticks of lollypops. Everywhere is loot for a rat--in tents, in booths, in hay lofts--why, a fair has enough disgusting leftover food to satisfy a whole army of rats."
Templeton's eyes were blazing.
" Is this true?" he asked. "Is this appetizing yarn of yours true? I like high living, and what you say tempts me."
"It is true," said the old sheep. "Go to the Fair Templeton. You will find that the conditions at a fair will surpass your wildest dreams. Buckets with sour mash sticking to them, tin cans containing particles of tuna fish, greasy bags stuffed with rotten..."
"That's enough!" cried Templeton. "Don't tell me anymore I'm going!”
― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“Then I started reading this timetable I had in my pocket. Just to stop lying. Once I getstarted, I can go for hours if I feel like it. No kidding. Hours.”
― J.D. Salinger

“My greatest enemies are Women and the Sea. These things I hate. Women because they are weak and stupid and live in the shadow of men and are nothing compared to them, and the Sea because it has always frustrated me, destroying what I have built, washing away what I have left, wiping clean the marks I have made.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Wasp Factory