/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.1776037]

What is the most beautiful quote you have ever read?

[Anonymous No.1776038]

bump

[Anonymous No.1776043]

[...]
And this shall be for music when no one else is near
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear
That only I remember
That only you admire...

[Anonymous No.1776044]

Boredom: The Desire for Desires - Leo Tolstoy

[Anonymous No.1776045]

"But She never lost her head,/even while she giving head..."-David Bowie

[Anonymous No.1776047]

>>1776043
Of the long road, that stretches,
And the road-side fire.

[Anonymous No.1776046]

Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks

[Anonymous No.1776051]

George Washington:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

[Anonymous No.1776052]

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

[Anonymous No.1776061]

>>1776051
wasn't that Voltaire?

[Anonymous No.1776063]

"And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest man." - John Donne

"To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy." - Kahlil Gibran

"For whom, for what, was that bird singing? No mate, no rival was watching it. What made it sit at the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness?" - George Orwell

I've got a bunch of these.

[Anonymous No.1776072]

>>1776061
sorry guys, i'm pretty sure it was obama...

[Anonymous No.1776103]

[Anonymous No.1776112]

>>1776063
Go on, before people ruin this thread.

[Anonymous No.1776211]

"My policy, succinctly stated, has been Fuck You, Fuck That Guy Over There, And Then Fuck Every Other Person when it comes to people and their incredible opinions." - Tycho, Penny Arcade

[Anonymous No.1776218]

>"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

-Henry David Thoreau

I wish my life was this intense...

[crazyforthenats No.1776219]

The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic - Winston Churchill

[Anonymous No.1776230]

"The moral sense in mortals is the duty /
We have to pay on mortal sense of beauty"

[Anonymous No.1776234]

>>1776218
It is. just go to the woods.

[Anonymous No.1776243]

"If you ever find yourself in a fair fight, it is because you did not prepare properly."

[Anonymous No.1776248]

>>1776218 Henry David Thoreau I wish my life was this intense...


Your "intense" Thoreau was little more than a liar and poseur posthumously lionized by his peers and further sanctified by later generations who either deliberately ignored the facts or were never aware of them.

The man who wanted to "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like" lived in a cabin which was in Ralph Waldo Emerson's backyard and so close to Concord that Thoreau almost daily walked into town to drink at the taverns there. He regularly sent his laundry out to be washed and his mother arrived nearly every Sunday with a hamper full of food. And all so he could avoid paying his taxes.

If Thoreau were alive today, he'd be writing a blog about the evils of society and the need to live a simple from while eating delivered pizzas in the cozy nest of his mother's basement.

[Anonymous No.1776255]

>>1776234
Too many bugs.

>>1776248
So maybe his life wasn't exactly like he described. Who cares? The feeling of communion with nature and the "carpe diem" lifestyle he described in the book is what matters.
I never said I wanted to be Thoreau, I just wish I could experience a life as intense as the one he described.

[Anonymous No.1776280]

>>177625503 So maybe his life wasn't exactly like he described. Who cares?

His life was nothing like he described. He made it all up and you've become enamored with his lies. Shouldn't you care that it's all a fantasy?

>> The feeling of communion with nature and the "carpe diem" lifestyle he described in the book is what matters.

He didn't commune with shit and, far from seizing the day, the only thing he actually seized with the charity of others. He was a failed primary school teacher turned bum who could write a good line of bullshit and managed to trickl a bunch of proto-Evangelicals into supporting him. Nothing more.

>> I never said I wanted to be Thoreau, I just wish I could experience a life as intense as the one he described.

The intense life he described never existed, so you might as well wish you could live the intense life of Aragorn that Tolkien described in LoTR.

[Anonymous No.1776302]

>>1776280
>His life was nothing like he described. He made it all up and you've become enamored with his lies. Shouldn't you care that it's all a fantasy?

>No, I shouldn't. What do I care if Mellvile actually hunted a white whale or if Defoe was actually marroned on an island? It's the words that get a hold of me, not the fact that they might have once been real for somenone.

He didn't commune with shit and, far from seizing the day, the only thing he actually seized with the charity of others. He was a failed primary school teacher turned bum who could write a good line of bullshit and managed to trickl a bunch of proto-Evangelicals into supporting him. Nothing more.

Again, I don't care if he wrote Walden knee deep in the actual Walden pond or if he was in his mothers basement at the time. The descriptions are vivid and realistic. But more than that, it's philosophy of life that he promotes of a certain unity with nature that is beautiful.

>The intense life he described never existed, so you might as well wish you could live the intense life of Aragorn that Tolkien described in LoTR.

What's wrong with taking inspiration from ficitional characters?


Also, you clearly dislike Thoreau, but calling him a "bum"? Despite your personal feelings, don't you thinkk he was a good writer?

[Ralph Wiggum !!RbKRCS+NEzU No.1776307]

Tell me why world, unfathomable and good; the beauty of everything is infinite and cruel.

From the Kayo Dot song Marathon.

[Anonymous No.1776316]

The silence spreads. I talk and must talk. So I speak to him and say to him: "Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was that abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony — forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you could be my brother, just like Kat and Albert. Take twenty years of my life, comrade, and stand up — take more, for I do not know what I can even attempt to do with it now."

Paul Bäumer in All Quiet on the Western Front

[Anonymous No.1776320]

>>1776219
It's actually misattributed to Stalin
and a paraphrase from a work of Kurt Tucholsky ("Französischer Witz"). Do your homework before spreading wrong info.

[ThatFuckingAirlinePilot !!ILFj+iqcCKp No.1776338]

I'm not helping you climb your ladder
I'm busy climbing mine, that's how it's been since the dawn of time

- Mike Skinner

[Virginia W00F !!GThm5VqxqDi No.1776341]

>What is the most beautiful quote you have ever read?

assfulloffarts

[Anonymous No.1776353]

>>1776302 No, I shouldn't. What do I care if Mellvile actually hunted a white whale or if Defoe was actually marroned on an island?

Melville and Dafoe didn't pretend "Moby Dick" or "Crusoe" were anything other than fiction. Thoreau, on the other hand, presented "Walden" as fact.

>> The descriptions are vivid and realistic.

Because he's a fine writer.

>> But more than that, it's philosophy of life that he promotes of a certain unity with nature that is beautiful.

While beautiful, it's a philosophy Thoreau lied about following.

>> What's wrong with taking inspiration from ficitional characters?

As long as you're aware they're fictional, nothing.

>> Also, you clearly dislike Thoreau, but calling him a "bum"? Despite your personal feelings, don't you thinkk he was a good writer?

Thoreau is a grand writer because he was able to create a work of fiction that has been mistaken as fact by you and others like for over a century.

I happen to like "Walden" and re-read it every few years. I also know it's a work of fiction and that Thoreau deliberately misrepresented the work for personal gain.

This story might explain things to you. There was a fellow named Tristan Jones who died in the mid-90s. He began writing magazine articles and books in 70s about his worldwide adventures sailing solo across most of the oceans and seas of the world. His stories about his life were fantastic, memorable, lyrical, and sparked thousands of people to try their hand at both long distance sailing and the lifestyle he led.

The trouble was Tristan Jones made almost all of it up. He did lot things once he became famous, but he bullshitted about most of what occurred before that. That doesn't mean his books aren't memorable or that he wasn't an interesting man. It does mean that he felt to need to lie to us and profit from those lies. That doesn't effect his status as a writer, but it should effect his status as a man.

Perhaps you'll understand that.

[Anonymous No.1776456]

>>1776320
Ooooooooooh that's an unforunate failure there.

[Anonymous No.1776457]

>>1776045
I didn't know Lou Reed took that from Bowie

[Anonymous No.1776460]

Don't you mean quotation OP?

[Anonymous No.1776469]

>>1776457
'I can no longer tell who is trolling who'
-Kierkegaard

[Anonymous No.1776512]

>>1776353
>Melville and Dafoe didn't pretend "Moby Dick" or "Crusoe" were anything other than fiction. Thoreau, on the other hand, presented "Walden" as fact.

I'm really not in a position to comment on this because you're the first person I've ever heard say that some things didn't happen as he described them. Either way, I think we can state as fact that he, in fact, did stay for a year in cabin near Walden pond. I can forgive him for embelishing a bit to make for a more interesting read. In fact, I think it's very common for someone telling a story that happened to them to add extra bits for dramatic purposes.

>While beautiful, it's a philosophy Thoreau lied about following.

I see what you are saying. Then again, I don't really care if Seneca or Marcus Aurelius really followed Stoicism to the letter. I still find the tenents of the philosophy beautiful.

I understand what you're trying to say with the story of Tristan Jones, but I don't think the two are comparable at all. You're simplifying what Walden means. The book wasn't just about a guy living in the woods and documenting what happened in his day to day. It wasn't supposed to be taken an autobiography because its contents go beyond just being the diary of a hermit. Walden is an influential book because it was the first to deal with enviromental issues and the desire to protect, and live in communion, with nature. And in that sense, does it really matter if everything happened JUST as he described it? I don't think it does, as the meaning still remains.

[Anonymous No.1776518]

preemptive
> woman
> write anything worth quoting outside the realm of humor
since no Ayn Rand quotes are here yet.

[Anonymous No.1776517]

>>1776512
>you're the first person I've ever heard say that some things didn't happen as he described them.

You obviously have very little contact with literary circles.

You probably think Harper Lee wrote "To Kill A Mockingbird," too. Cute kid.

[Anonymous No.1776524]

>>1776517
You probably think Harper Lee wrote "To Kill A Mockingbird," too.

a conspiracy theorist....you people are hilarious.

>Cute kid

That's funny too, as I am probably older than you.

>You obviously have very little contact with literary circles

This is why I don't often come to this board. Could you be any more pretentious?

[Anonymous No.1776548]

>>1776517
> He thinks he and the other undergrad students are a "literary circle".

[Anonymous No.1776554]

>>1776248
>>1776248
>>1776248

[Anonymous No.1776560]

I'll champion indiscrimination till doomsday, on the ground that it leads to health and a kind of very real, enviable happiness.

-buddy glass

[Anonymous No.1776566]

>>1776518

>implying women can write humor

[Anonymous No.1776589]

"My Name Is Kiiiiiiiiiiiiidddddddd, KID ROCK"


- Confucius

[Anonymous No.1776590]

>>1776517
>You obviously have very little contact with literary circles.

[Anonymous No.1776591]

>>1776517
how much do you have to hate women to think that if truman fuckin capote really wrote TKIM he wouldn't have told everybody on earth

[nom de plume No.1776594]

>>1776218
:3 I live near the woods where HDT stayed.

[Anonymous No.1776610]

>>1776248
Did Thoreau actually claim otherwise though? That paragraph doesn't actually say he's going to live by himself, or far away in the wilderness, or anything like that- it's more about an attitude to living that he wants to develop. The only thing that might clash is living 'Spartan-like'- but I imagine Spartans went out drinking too, y'know?

I should look at the actual thing, I guess, but if you have any links to provably false bits of the book that'd be grand.

[Anonymous No.1776621]

>Thoreau lived in his mother basement

well duh check out that neckbeard

i can imagine his rack of anime figurines already

[Anonymous No.1776622]

It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

[the /co/m/mu/ter No.1776862]

"It's been agreed, the whole world stinks so no one's taking showers anymore"

"Is it wrong to wish on space hardware?"

"I'm trying to right my wrongs but it's funny the same wrongs help me write this song."

I'm sorry /lit/ but I'm a total sucker for dumb little one liners in songs I like.

[Anonymous No.1776875]

The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded.

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

[Anonymous No.1776974]

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world the rabbit wasn't already in the hat.

[Anonymous No.1777042]

>>1776061

It is Voltaire

[Looshin !!PDJzxS1qNaZ No.1777056]

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
- Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson

[deleted No.1777061]

>>1776469

That was Spinoza actually

[Anonymous No.1777068]

"And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness." - Camus

"its healing powers, on a disappointed heart" - Austen (about alcohol)

"Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought." - Helps

"Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of a man's heart..." - Golding

Figured I'd share some of my favorites.

[deleted No.1777072]

To troll, or not to troll, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous butthurt,
Or to take arms against a sea of internet tough guys,
And by opposing end them? To an hero, to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and over nine thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to fap– ay, there's the rub:

[Anonymous No.1777081]

>>1777072
Lolled when you didn't change "Ay, there is the rub"

[Anonymous No.1777089]

may you die with all your work done

[Anonymous No.1777098]

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
-Carl Sagan

[Anonymous No.1777121]

"Families, when all was eaten and no hope left, took their last look at the sun, built up their cottage doors that none might see them die nor hear their groans, and were found weeks afterwards skeletons on their own hearth." - John Mitchell.

[Anonymous No.1777241]

"In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity."
-H.S.T

[Anonymous No.1777677]

bump
-anonymous

[Anonymous No.1777678]

If wishes were fishes we'd all cast nets.
-G.H.

[Anonymous No.1777692]

Brown babies can't have monkeys

[Anonymous No.1777712]

"Sometimes, even the smartest guy in the room just wants to fuck"

-anonymous

[Anonymous No.1777721]

"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake." - Victor Hugo

"Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation." - D. Elton Trueblood

[Anonymous No.1777725]

In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.