Modern Classic Quotes

“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“The whole purpose of the construction of The Bridge of Silver Wings was to provide a path leading to The River of Winged Dreams, or to serve as a resting place until the river’s deeper and truer nature revealed itself.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams

“-make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being...”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“You’re inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow time down?” Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“E per quanto mi piacerebbe credere che ci sia un verità dietro l'illusione, mi sono convinto che non c'è alcuna verità dietro l'illusione. Perché, tra la "relatà" da un lato, e il punto in cui la mente va a sbattere contro la realtà, esiste uno spazio sottile, uno spicchio d'arcobaleno da cui origina la bellezza, il punto in cui due superfici molto diverse tra loro si mescolano e si confondono per procurare ciò che la vita non ci dà: e questo è lo spazio in cui tutta l'arte prende forma, e tutta la magia.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“O, gentle Bard, if thou couldst but glimpse our digital age!
We set words in light called ‘blogs,’
Which are, alas, neither fens nor afflictions.
They are thoughts taken wing for the world to see,
Much like thou didst with plays posthumously,
Held eternally aloft in iambic pentameter.”
― Stewart Stafford

“When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know.
"Oh, sure you know," the photographer said.
"She wants," said Jay Cee wittily, "to be everything.”
― Sylvia Plath; The bell jar