What is your favourite lines or passages from novels or poetry?

[Anonymous No.14738278]

[Anonymous No.14738911]

Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

[Anonymous No.14738960]

The earthly hope men set their hearts upon turns ashes--or it prospers. And anon, like snow upon the desert's dusty face lighting a little hour or two - is gone.

[Anonymous No.14739019]

>>14738278
>“Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.”

>"You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again. And I will wait for you"

>When I say to the Moment flying;
‘Linger a while — thou art so fair!’

>"Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them" (and other Marcus Aurelius quotes)

>pic related

[Anonymous No.14739046]

>>14738278
From John Milton's Paradise Lost book four starting line 292
>The image oftheir glorious maker shone, Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure, Severe but in true filial freedom placed; Whence true authority in men; though both Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed: For contemplation he and valour formed, For softness she and sweet attractive grace, He for God only, she for God in him:

[Anonymous No.14739050]

>>14738278

I know you’re no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.

[Anonymous No.14739074]

>>14738278
>Already certain portions of my life are like dismantled rooms of a palace too vast for an impoverished owner to occupy in its entirety. I can hunt no longer: if there were no one but me to disturb them in their ruminations and their play the deer in the Etrurian mountains would be at peace. With the Diana of the forests I have always maintained the swift-changing and passionate relations which are those of a man with the object of his love: the boar hunt gave me my first chance, as a boy, for command and for encounter with danger; I fairly threw myself into the sport, and my excesses in it brought reprimands from Trajan. The kill in a Spanish forest was my earliest acquaintance with death and with courage, with pity for living creatures and the tragic pleasure of seeing them suffer. Grown to manhood, I found in hunting release from many a secret struggle with adversaries too subtle or too stupid in turn, too weak or too strong for me; this evenly matched battle between human intelligence and the wisdom of wild beasts seemed strangely clean compared to the snares set by men for men.

[Anonymous No.14739089]

>>14739050
damn

[Anonymous No.14739100]

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

[Anonymous No.14739576]

>>14739100
wheres this from?

[Anonymous No.14739618]

over and over by us torn in two,
the god is the hidden place that heals again.
we are sharp-edged, because we want to know,
but he is always scattered and serene.

even the pure, the consecrated gift
he takes into his world no other way
than by positioning himself, unmoved,
to face the one end that is free.

only the dead may drink
from the source that we just hear, the unseen pool,
when the god, mute, allows them with a gesture.

here to us, only the noise is offered.
and the lamb keeps begging for its bell
because of a more quiet instinct

(my specific most favorite line in the german poem is this one:

nur de Tote trinkt
aus der hier vons uns gehörten Quelle,
wenn der Gott ihm schweigend winkt, dem Toten.)

[Anonymous No.14739688]

>>14739576
Eliot’s “Prufrock”

[Anonymous No.14739834]

[Anonymous No.14739840]

[Anonymous No.14740446]

>>14739834
i started balding at 18 y/o fuck this bitch

[Anonymous No.14740474]

Silence, and sacred rest; peace, and pure joyes;
Kind loves keep house, ly close, and make no noise,
And room enough for Monarchs, while none swells
Beyond the kingdomes of contentfull Cells.

[Anonymous No.14741068]

>>14739046

I think of this book all the time. It's what taught me the difference between reading as an indulgence and reading as an intellectual pursuit.

John Milton, 1667

Book I (254 - 255)
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven

Book IV (93 - 110): Satan on his own nature.
But say I could repent, and could obtain
By act of grace, my former state; how soon
Would height recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feigned submission swore; ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void -
For never can true reconcilement grow
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse
And heavier fall; so should I purchase dear
Short intermission, bought with double smart
This knows my Punisher; therefore as far
From granting he, as I from begging, peace.
All hope excluded thus, behold, instead
Of us, outcast, exiled, his new delight,
Mankind, created, and for him this World
So farewell hope, and with hope, farewell fear,
Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my Good

Book IV (951 - 953 & 960): Gabriel insults Satan.
O sacred name of faithfulness profane!
Faithful to whom? to thy rebellious crew?
Army of fiends, fit body to fit head
...
But mark what I arede thee now: Avaunt!


Book V (520 - 521): Raphael instructs Adam to be vigilant against Satan.
Attend: That thou art happy, owe to God;
That thou continuest such, owe to thyself.

Book VII (505 - 516): On the creation of Man.
There wanted yet the master-work, the end
Of all yet done - a creature who, not prone
And brute as other creatures, but endued
With sanctity of reason, might erect
His stature, and upright with front serene
Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from thence
Magnanimous to correspond with Heaven,
But grateful to acknowledge whence his good
Descends; thither with heart, and voice, and eyes
Directed in devotion, to adore
And worship God Supreme, who made him chief
Of all his works

Book IX (459 - 469): Satan beholds Eve.
Her graceful innocence, her every air
Of gesture or least action, overawed
His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought.
That space the Evil One abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remained
Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed,
Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge.
But the hot hell that always in him burns,
Though in mid Heaven, soon ended his delight,
And tortures him now more the more he sees
Of pleasure not for him ordained: then soon
Fierce hate he recollects