“Learning!” Eilonwy declared. “I’ve been up to my ears in learning. It doesn’t show, so it’s hard to believe that it’s there.”
-The High King, Lloyd Alexander
And thus it came to pass that the Silmarils found their long homes: One in the airs of heaven, and one in the fires of the heart of the world, and one in the deep waters.
-The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien
“What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind—then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and all is as it should be.”
-Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
“He might tell me how my story ends,” he murmured.
Meggie looked at him in astonishment. “You mean you don’t know?”
Dustfinger smiled . . .
“What’s so unusual about that, princess?” He asked quietly. “Do you know how your story ends?”
-Inkheart, Cornelia Funke
“Let me dream yet awhile.”
-The Worm Ouroboros, ER Eddison
Never again would he glitter and glide
and show himself off in midnight air,
exulting in his riches: he fell to earth
through the battle-strength in Beowulf’s arm.
-Beowulf
“Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest spectacle—the burning of Rome in Nero’s time, for instance? . . . ‘Town burned down; no insurance; boy brast a window; fireman brake his neck!’ Why, that ain’t a picture!”
-A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
“Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work.”
-Moby Dick, Herman Melville
“Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!”
-Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
“Cursed demon! You have met your end! The Shivering Fire awaits you! I shall spread your vile essence across this hall like . . . um, like margarine, a very thick layer of it . . .”
-Ptolemy’s Gate, Jonathon Stroud
“Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,” he said.
-The Listeners, Walter de la Mare
“I wouldn’t care about my spirits,” said Bluebell, “if my legs weren’t so tired. Slugs are lucky to not have legs. I think I’ll be a slug.”
-Watership Down, Richard Adams
“You have no longer a master, Caleb,” said Ravenswood, endeavoring to extricate himself; “why, old man, would you cling to a falling tower?”
-The Bride of Lammermoor, Sir Walter Scott
Better late than never.
-Ab Urbe Condita, Livy
“Do you know I don’t know how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it?”
-The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Dear old world,” she murmured, “you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”
-Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
Sherwood in the twilight,
Is Robin Hood awake?
-A Song of Sherwood, Alfred Noyes
“Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark.”
-The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
Curufin, Celegorm the fair,
Damrod and Diriel were there,
and Cranthir dark, and Maidros tall
(whom after torment would befall),
and Maglor the mighty who like the sea
with deep voice sings yet mournfully.
-The Lay of Leithian, JRR Tolkien
If Sydney Carton every shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in the house of Dr. Manette.
-A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
“We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.”
-The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
“Let’s have different color rabbits, George.”
“Sure we will,” George said sleepily. “Red and blue and green rabbits, Lennie. Millions of ‘em.”
-Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
Trust dreams.
Trust your heart, and
Trust your story.
-Instructions, Neil Gaiman
When the apple is ripe and falls—why does it fall? Is it because . . . its stalk is withered . . . because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it?
-War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.
-Paradise Lost, John Milton
“And I write novels!” chimed in the other cop. “Though I haven’t had any published yet, so I better warn you, I’m in a meeeean mood!”
-The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, here goes—I mean Amen,” said Ransom.
-Perelandra, CS Lewis
“Now,” said Cei, “it is for you to pay me my story.”
-The Mabinogion
“I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”
-Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
“Lacho calad! Drego morn!”
-The Children of Hurin, JRR Tolkien
Marius was done for. He loved a woman.
-Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
Roland is fierce and
Oliver is wise
And both for valor
May bear away the prize.
-The Song of Roland
From these most holy waters, born anew
I came, like trees by change of calendars
Renewed with new-sprung foliage through and through,
Pure and prepared to leap up to the stars.
-Purgatorio, Dante
All children, except one, grow up.
-Peter Pan, JM Barrie
“My day has been too long.”
-The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
Oh hark! Oh hear! How thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
-The Splendor Falls, Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Nothing wrong with me,” said Puddleglum. “Not a frog. Nothing frog with me. I’m a respectabiggle.”
-The Silver Chair, CS Lewis
Of arms I sing, and the hero, destiny’s exile . . .
-The Aeneid, Virgil
The fate of this man or that was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.
-The Once and Future King, TH White
“I am the king of Olaf-land, and there’s nothing you and your sheep can do about it.”
-The End, Lemony Snicket
Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise . . .
-Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
“Namarie! Nai hiruvalye Valimar.
Nai elye hiruva. Namarie!”
-The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkien
She left the web, she left the room,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.
-The Lady of Shalott, Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Er, aha ha. Hello mateys, I was flying my cloud, you see . . .”
-Mossflower, Brian Jacques
If there be any truth to poets’ prophecies, I shall live to all eternity, immortalized by fame.
-Metamorphoses, Ovid
“Leave him build his flutter-mills. The day’ll come, he’ll not even care to.”
-The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnon Rawlings
“You are a knave.”
-Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
I bow not yet before Iron Crown,
Nor cast my own small golden scepter down.
-Mythopoeia, JRR Tolkien
“I’m dying of boredom,” Howl said pathetically. “Or maybe just dying.”
-Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
“Schmendrick,”—for the wizard had just stooped through the doorway—“how many rs in ‘miracle’?”
“Two,” he answered wearily. “It has the same root as ‘mirror’.”
-The Last Unicorn, Peter S Beagle
Cassandra: O Father!
O my brothers! All your brightness dead!
I go. Now in the land of the defeated I
Will mourn my end and Agamemnon’s. I have lived.
-Agamemnon, Aeschyllus
“I followed you.”
“I saw no one.”
“That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.”
-His Last Bow; The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sing, O goddess, the ruinous wrath of Achilles . . .
-The Iliad, Homer
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
-Ode to the West Wind, Percy Bysshe Shelley
Two men only have a right to answer the question asked in Ecclesiastes 6,000 years ago, ‘That which is far off and exceedingly deep, who can find it out?’ These two men are Captain Nemo and I.
-20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
How vain are all the hopes of humankind!
How sweet their promises of quiet seem,
And yet they end in shadows, smoke and dream.
-Don Quixote, Cervantes
Ah, she thought wisely, I am dreaming again . . .
-The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley
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