/lit/ - Literature

In a similar vein “The only thing an old man can tell a young man is that it goes fast, real fast, and if you’re not careful it’s too late. Of course, the young man will never understand this truth.” - uncle norm

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.

>>20484972
What is this from?

>>20484966
Indeed. This idea that you always have time is just false. Sometimes it's too late when you're 25. Sometimes it's too late when you're 16 or 10. Sometimes a single mistake is enough to ruin the rest of your life beyond repair, and other times you don't even get to choose, somebody else's mistake ruins it for you.

>>20485144
If you don't know then you shouldn't be on this board.

>>20485144
Moby Dick

>>20485161
Ah, eat shit you pretentious, worthless, talentless little mongoloid. Only reason you didn't include the author and the book was that you wanted to post this little snide comment, wasn't it, little shit? Your kind lives for stuff like this, for a few seconds it makes you kinda forget how pointless and inferior you actually are, doesn't it?

Also, the fact that it talks about the sea makes it 90% likely that it's fucking Moby Dick, even without having read it. A favorite of your posing-as-a-high-brow-literate kind.

>>20485174
>he can't identify Melville's writing style or remember a very memorable and striking passage from Moby Dick, assuming he's read it
>he can't even fucking copy and paste the quote on Google to see where it's from
>NOOOOOO YOU'RE JUST PRETENTIOUS

I reiterate that maybe you shouldn't be on this board.

>>20484943
There's plenty of Dostoevsky quotes I could pick, but I'll go with
>"Love all God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all; and when once thou perceive this, thou wilt thenceforward grow every day to a fuller understanding of it: until thou come at last to love the whole world with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal.”

>>20485174
Go read Moby Dick instead of getting angry on this board

>'Dear Lord,' he said. 'let me be like Aron. Don’t make me mean. I don’t want to be. If you will let everybody like me, why, I’ll give you anything in the world, and if I haven’t got it, why, I’ll go for to get it. I don’t want to be mean. I don’t want to be lonely. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.'

>>20485188
>he can't even fucking copy and paste the quote on Google to see where it's from
I think this is the most damning criticism; a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips and somehow he's too lazy and self-assured in that laziness to bitch at someone else for not spoonfeeding him.

>>20485188
The worst part of your kind isn't even how worthless and talentless you are, it's how you infest every little space and how sure of yourself you always are, how confident that nobody can see right through your posing. You're like diseased rats slythering into every room and shitting everywhere your putrid diarrhea, you do that in real life and online, and there is simply no way to make you stop, because you think you're slick enough to convince people that you're not the insipid little shit that you actually are, you think you can trick everyone into considering you smart and sophisticated, so you double down and insist with your juvenile posing that NOBODY falls for. You're not only grating, obtuse, unoriginal and worthless, but impossible to get rid of. The literary equivalent of trannies shitting up online platforms and university groups.

>>20485174
You got pinged for being a tourist for that post. Enjoy.

>>20485215

>>20485215
>slythering
please tell me you're esl
go read some books

>>20485208
Is this from fucking Moby Dick again?
Are you guys too mentally deficient to understand the format of "quote + origin", is that too complicated for you, or do you plan on revealing that this shit is from some obscure polish author from the 19th century and then pretend like everyone who doesn't know it doesn't deserve to be on this board? Is there a point in your retardation, besides the obvious?

>>20485213
Not the point, little shit. I shouldn't have to just because he wants to pose as le high literate. You really don't understand the problem with his behavior? Is this board full of only 19 year old shit for brains?

>>20485219
Unfortunately I've been here for over a decade, little shit, ever since you and him were in grade school, probably. It's not that I'm a tourist, it's that you and a lot of other retarded little shits refuse to admit that you're retarded little shits.

>>20485236
>Is this from fucking Moby Dick again?
>a character named Aron
GO READ SOME FUCKING BOOKS, NEWFAGGOT

>>20485233
>amerisharts acting as if ESL aren't vastly intellectually superior to them.
Brag again about the 0.8 language you speak, burger.

>>20485228
>unironically anime posting
>in a literature board

>>20485249
It was a joke, imbecile.
Christ, I haven't been here in a few weeks and it seems like the level has gone even lower. What are you, a new batch of lit college freshmen? We need a containment board for you shitwits.

>>20485236
Instead of asking to begin with, you should have searched yourself. His reply was dismissive, rude, and pretentious, yes, but why not just look the quote up instead of making a reply post that added just as little to the thread? And why get so upset about this on 4chan? Behavior like that is to be expected from the anonymous shitheads that populate the site.

>>20485260
>getting THIS mad because someone posted a Moby Dick quote without identification and made a joke at the expense of his ignorance
You're hard-core projecting your own narcissism and insecurity.

>>20485193
>Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing.
"Dude just force yourself to feel something that you don't really feel. Dude, just convince yourself to love bugs and shit too. Dude, the mystery of God."
This passes for wisdom?

>For more than twenty years you have lived rent free with heating, lighting, and service all provided, and had the right to work how you pleased and as much as you pleased, even to do nothing. You were naturally a flabby, lazy man, and so you have tried to arrange your life so that nothing should disturb you or make you move. You have handed over your work to the assistant and the rest of the rabble while you sit in peace and warmth, save money, read, amuse yourself with reflections, with all sorts of lofty nonsense, and" (Ivan Dmitritch looked at the doctor's red nose) "with boozing; in fact, you have seen nothing of life, you know absolutely nothing of it, and are only theoretically acquainted with reality; you despise suffering and are surprised at nothing for a very simple reason: vanity of vanities, the external and the internal, contempt for life, for suffering and for death, comprehension, true happiness--that's the philosophy that suits the Russian sluggard best. You see a peasant beating his wife, for instance. Why interfere? Let him beat her, they will both die sooner or later, anyway; and, besides, he who beats injures by his blows, not the person he is beating, but himself. To get drunk is stupid and unseemly, but if you drink you die, and if you don't drink you die. A peasant woman comes with toothache . . . well, what of it? Pain is the idea of pain, and besides 'there is no living in this world without illness; we shall all die, and so, go away, woman, don't hinder me from thinking and drinking vodka.' A young man asks advice, what he is to do, how he is to live; anyone else would think before answering, but you have got the answer ready: strive for 'comprehension' or for true happiness. And what is that fantastic 'true happiness'? There's no answer, of course. We are kept here behind barred windows, tortured, left to rot; but that is very good and reasonable, because there is no difference at all between this ward and a warm, snug study. A convenient philosophy. You can do nothing, and your conscience is clear, and you feel you are wise. . . . No, sir, it is not philosophy, it's not thinking, it's not breadth of vision, but laziness, fakirism, drowsy stupefaction. "Yes," cried Ivan Dmitritch, getting angry again, "you despise suffering, but I'll be bound if you pinch your finger in the door you will howl at the top of your voice."

>>20484943
fuck it all and no regrets

>>20485236
>Steinbeck is an obscure Polish author from the 1800s or else Melville's twin
Jfc anon, never go full retard

>>20485253
>thinks america is the origin of the english language
>talks of superior intellect when he's incapable of looking up a quote and gets angry if an anon posts just the quote, so that it may speak for itself
Alright, last (You) for (You) buddy.

For fun, I'll post another of my favorite quotes with no sourcing
>the question is whether or not the "wellsprings of life" have not weakened with the increase..."
>"Of railroads?" cried Kolya
>"Not of railway communication, my young but passionate adolescent, but of that whole tendency, of which railways may serve as an image, so to speak, an artistic expression. Hurrying, clanging, banging, and speeding, they say, for the happiness of mankind! 'It's getting much too noisy and industrial in mankind, there is too little spiritual peace', complains a secluded thinker. 'Yes, but the banging of carts delivering bread dfor hungry mankind may be better than spiritual peace', triumphantly replies another, a widely traveled thinker, and walks off vaingloriously. I, the vile Lebedev, do not believe in the carts that deliver bread to mankind! For carts that deliver bread to all mankind, without any moral foundations for their action, may quite cold-bloodedly exclude a considerable part of mankind from enjoying what they deliver, as has already happened..."

>>20485301
and fuck fucking phones too

>>20485193
based
>>20485283
love isn't a feeling, retard

>>20485283
>implying indifference or contempt for the world is more natural than a love of it, and that one must force themselves to love life instead of forcing themselves to hate it
You poor soul

>>20485306
Watch him screech because you didn't explain this quote is from The Idiot.

There's a lot of them but I recently read a Murakami story and there's a line there that has stuck with me.

"I’ve heard it said that the happiest time in our lives is the period when pop songs really mean something to us, really get to us."

Fa!” She gave me a nudge with her shoulder. “You talk as if some lord should come riding down from the keep and carry me off. ”
I thought of August with his stuffy manners, or Regal simpering at her. “Eda forbid. You’d be wasted on them. They wouldn’t have the wit to understand you, or the heart to appreciate you. ”
Molly looked down at her work-worn hands. “Who would, then?” she asked softly.
Boys are fools. The conversation had grown and twined around us, my words coming as naturally as breathing to me. I had not intended any flattery, or subtle courtship. The sun was beginning to dip into the water, and we sat close by one another and the beach before us was like the world at our feet. If I had said at that moment, “I would,” I think her heart would have tumbled into my awkward hands like ripe fruit from a tree. I think she might have kissed me, and sealed herself to me of her own free will. But I couldn’t grasp the immensity of what I suddenly knew I had come to feel for her. It drove the simple truth from my lips, and I sat dumb and half a moment later Smithy came, wet and sandy, barreling into us, so that Molly leaped to her feet to save her skirts, and the opportunity was lost forever, blown away like spray on the wind.

Assassin's Apprentice

>>20484943
“He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought that the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.”

>>20485264
This is the right answer. No excuse for not doing a quick google, even if it does make sense to provide the source of the quote.

You can tell someone is scrambling when the “outs” they offer in response to a question are:
a) “get off /lit/ until you’ve read our books” (in an attempt to maintain some pretentious standard), or
b) “just google it” (in which case the pretentious standard would be eroded)

The fact that these two options don’t align is all I need to see this guy is just trolling. Enjoy your quotes and move on, Anon.

> “Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”

>>20484943
Chin up, anons. Tomorrow will be a new day. One that has never been exprrienced before; One that nobody knows what will happen; One that is a new lease of life for you.
>I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

>>20485155
if you run out of time you never had it.

>>20485282
its even worse when one remembers this shit is anonymous. who is he truing to impress and who are we supposed to be impressed by?

>>20485283
smells of projection. sorry you were borne without the capacity for compassion or wonder. unfortunately the best case scenario for people like you is that tragedy and hardship may jar you enough to dislodge those capacities from your frozen synapses.

>>20487675
cringe i hope u die

>>20485363
:(

>>20487675
tomorrow will be just like yesterday, you lying cretin

>>20485174
Funny comeback. Don't let the pretentious sissyboys get to you. I've read Moby Dick and didn't recognize the passage off-hand. Guess that means it's time to read it again.

>>20484943
"Suicide has never been dealt with except as a social phenomenon. On the contrary, we are
concerned here, at the outset, with the relationship between individual thought and suicide. An act like
this is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art. The man himself is ignorant of it. One evening he pulls the trigger or jumps. Of an apartment-building manager who had killed himself I was told that he had lost his daughter five years before, that he had changed greatly since, and that that experience had "undermined" him. A more exact word cannot be imagined. Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light." -Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.

With the exception of Whitman's poem "To You," I think this is the only passage in literature that makes my eyes start watering.

Sorry for the gay formatting. I pasted it from a PDF.

"I Poobed n shidded n fardded"
Bros...

"Nor was his hatred of anarchy hypocritical. He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists."

"Omnipotence is most omnipotent when one does nothing!" answered the machine. "You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down!

“The essence of man,” Budach said, chewing slowly, “lies in his astonishing ability to get used to anything. There’s nothing in nature that man could not learn to live with. Neither horse nor dog nor mouse has this property. Probably God, as he was creating man, guessed the torments he was condemning him to and gave him an enormous reserve of strength and patience. It is difficult to say whether this is good or bad. If man didn’t have such patience and endurance, all good people would have long since perished, and only the wicked and soulless would be left in this world. On the other hand, the habit of enduring and adapting turns people into dumb beasts, who differ from the animals in nothing except anatomy, and who only exceed them in helplessness. And each new day gives rise to a new horror of evil and violence.”

Rumata looked over at Kira. She sat across from Budach and listened without looking away, propping up her cheek on her little fist. Her eyes were sad; she was clearly very sorry for humankind. “You’re probably right, honorable Budach,” said Rumata. “But take me, for example. Here I am, a simple noble don.” Budach’s high forehead creased, his eyes opened wide with surprise and merriment. “I have tremendous love for learned men—that is, gentility of the soul. And I cannot figure out why you, the keepers and only holders of high knowledge, are so hopelessly passive. Why do you meekly allow yourself to be despised, thrown in jails, burned at the stake? Why do you separate the meaning of your life, the pursuit of knowledge—from the practical requirements of life, the struggle against evil?”

>>20488502
Budach pushed away the empty plate of tarts. “You ask strange questions, Don Rumata,” he said. “It’s funny, I was asked the same questions by Don Gug, the chamberlain of our duke. Are you acquainted with him? I thought so. The struggle against evil! But what is evil? Everyone is free to understand this in his own way. For us scholars, evil is in ignorance, but the church teaches that ignorance is a blessing and that all evil comes from knowledge. For the plowman evil is taxes and drought, and for the bread-seller droughts are good. For a slave, evil is a drunk and cruel master; for a craftsman, a greedy moneylender. So what is this evil against which we must struggle, Don Rumata?” He looked sadly at his listeners. “Evil is ineradicable. No man is able to decrease its quantity in the world. He can improve his own fate somewhat, but it is always at the expense of the fate of others. And there will always be kings, some more cruel and some less, and barons, some more violent and some less, and there will always be the ignorant masses, who admire their oppressors and loathe their liberators. And it’s all because a slave has a much better understanding of his master, however brutal, than his liberator, for each slave can easily imagine himself in his master’s place, but few can imagine themselves in the place of a selfless liberator. That’s how people are, Don Rumata, and that’s how our world is.”

“The world is constantly changing, Doctor Budach,” said Rumata. “We know of a time when there were no kings.”
[11:59 AM]
“The world cannot keep changing forever,” Budach disagreed, “for nothing lasts forever, even change. We don’t know the laws of perfection, but perfection will be achieved sooner or later. Consider, for example, the order of our society. How pleasing to the eye is this precise, geometrically correct system! At the bottom are the peasants and artisans, above them is the gentry, then comes the clergy, and then, finally, the king. What careful planning, what stability, what harmonious order! Why would we want to change this polished crystal, made by the hands of the jeweler in the sky? No structure is more stable than the pyramid—any knowledgeable architect will tell you that.” He raised a lecturing finger. “Grain spilled from a sack doesn’t settle in an even layer, but forms a so-called conical pyramid. Each seed clings to the next, in an effort not to roll down. So it is with humanity. If it wants to be an entity of its own, people must cling to one another, inevitably forming a pyramid.”

>>20488503
“Do you sincerely consider this world perfect?” Rumata asked with surprise. “After meeting Don Reba, after prison …”

“My young friend, yes, of course! There’s much I don’t like in the world, much I would like to be different. But what can one do? Perfection looks different in the eyes of a higher power than in mine. There is no sense in a tree lamenting that it cannot move, though it would probably be glad to flee from the lumberjack’s ax.”
[11:59 AM]
“And what if you could change the divine decrees?”

“Only a higher power is capable of this.”

“But still, imagine that you’re God …”

Budach laughed. “If I could imagine myself as God, I’d become him!”

“Well, what if you had the chance to advise God?”

“You have a rich imagination,” Budach said with pleasure. “That’s good! Are you literate? Wonderful! I would enjoy working with you.”

“You flatter me … Still, what advice would you give to the Almighty? What, in your opinion, should the Almighty do, in order for you to say, ‘Now the world is good and kind’?”

Budach, smiling approvingly, leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on his stomach. Kira was looking at him eagerly. “All right,” he said, “if you wish. I’d tell the Almighty: ‘Creator, I don’t know your plans. Maybe you never intended to make people kind and happy. Then start wishing it! It would be so easy to achieve. Give people plenty of bread, meat, and wine, give them clothing and shelter. Let hunger and need disappear, and with them, all that divides people would be gone too.’”

“Is that it?” Rumata asked.

“You think that is not enough?”

>>20488506
Rumata shook his head. “God would answer you: ‘This would not benefit man. For the strong of your world would take from the weak that which I have given them, and the weak would still remain poor.’”

“I would ask God to shield the weak. ‘Enlighten the cruel princes,’ I would say.”

“Cruelty is power. Having lost their cruelty, the princes would lose their power, and other cruel men would replace them.”
[11:59 AM]
Budach stopped smiling. “Punish the cruel,” he said firm
ly, “so that it would become unseemly for the strong to be cruel to the weak.”

“Man is born weak. He becomes strong when there’s no one stronger around him. When the cruel of the strong will be punished, their place will be taken by the strongest of the weak. Who will also be cruel. Then everyone will have to be chastised, and this I do not desire.”

“You know best, Almighty. Then just make it so that people have all they need, and do not take away from each other that which you gave them.”

“Even this will not benefit people,” Rumata sighed, “for when they get everything for free, without working for it, from my hands, they will forget how to work, lose their zest for life, and will become my pets, whom I will henceforth be forced to feed and clothe for all eternity.”

“Don’t give it all at once!” Budach said fervently. “Give it to them gradually, little by little!”

“People will gradually take what they need themselves.”
[11:59 AM]
Budach gave an awkward laugh. “Yes, I see, it’s not that simple,” he said. “Somehow I’ve never thought about these things before. We seem to have considered everything. Although,” he leaned forward, “here’s another possibility. Make it so that people love work and knowledge more than anything, so that work and knowledge are the only meanings of their existence!”

Yes, that’s another thing we were planning to try, thought Rumata. Mass hypnoinduction, positive remoralization. Hypnoemitters on three equatorial satellites. “I could do this, too,” he said. “But should we deprive mankind of its history? Should we exchange one mankind for another? Would it not be the same thing as wiping mankind off the face of the planet and creating a new mankind in its place?”

Budach, crinkling his brow, pondered silently. Rumata waited. The melancholy sound of creaking wagons sounded outside the window again. Budach said quietly, “Then, Lord, wipe us off the face of the planet and create us anew in a more perfect form … Or, even better, leave us be and let us go our own way.”

“My heart is full of pity,” Rumata said slowly. “I cannot do that.”

>>20484972
I tried explaining this to my Grandma when she said I need therapy but she didn't get it.

>>20484943
"Every step brought him nearer to London, farther from his own sober
inartistic life. A light began to tremble on the horizon of his mind. He was
not so old - thirty-two. His temperament might be said to be just at the
point of maturity. There were so many different moods and impressions
that he wished to express in verse. He felt them within him. He tried to
weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant
note of his temperament, he thought, but it was a melancholy tempered
by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give
expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen. He would
never be popular: he saw that. He could not sway the crowd, but he
might appeal to a little circle of kindred minds. The English critics,
perhaps, would recognize him as one of the Celtic school by reason of the
melancholy tone of his poems; besides that, he would put in allusions. He
began to invent sentences and phrases from the notice which his book
would get. 'Mr. Chandler has the gift of easy and graceful verse'... 'A
wistful sadness pervades these poems'... 'The Celtic note'. It was a pity
his name was not more Irish-looking. Perhaps it would be better to insert
his mother's name before the surname: Thomas Malone Chandler; or
better still: T. Malone Chandler. He would speak to Gallaher about it."

Unironically makes me want to kill myself when I read it.

>>20484943
>At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women’s morals almost more than unbridled passion—the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man—was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened... it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you.

>>20485144
Midwit larper detected. You ostensibly having happened to have read a particular doorstopper (because 4chan told you to) that another anon in this thread hasn't does not mean that you are more well-read than him

>20485161

Meant for

>>20489151

>>20488527
Why? It seems to point out the character's vanity in the end rather than him being a tragic figure

>>20485283
Dosto wrote books to warn about apathetic midwits like yourself

1. Read Notes fron the underground to see where your headed with your indifference
2. Read Brothers K and study the character Alyosha to understand the true power of love

>>20484943
It makes no difference what men think of war. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.

>>20485313
Blessed post.

>>20489310
not who you responded too but just finished the idiot and have tbk to read soon as well, he did a great job painting the nihilists of his time, and knowing what eventually happened in Russia shortly after, it's very prophetic. it blows my mind how much of the average bugman science worshipper i see in the nihilists in dosto books.

>>20484943
Sounds pretentious

Everyone I knew and hung out with was a wastoid, and we knew it. It was hip to be ashamed of it, in a strange way. A weird kind of narcissistic despair. Or just to feel directionless and lost — we romanticized it.

>>20489985
Dostoevsky was incredibly prescient, so much so that it freaks me out a bit.
There's a quote from TBK where he talks about how "transmitting thoughts through the air" will give people a false sense of togetherness and cause many to become overly infatuated with themselves - he did a great job predicting the affect of the internet when only the telegram had been invented by that point.