Little Women

This is the best book I've read in a while, so I couldn't resist making an entry of literary quotes. I think the best works of art/entertainment are simple, free of pretentiousness, and from the heart.

She began to see that character is a better possession than money, rank, intellect, or beauty.

Simple, sincere people seldom speak much of their piety; it shows itself in acts, rather than in words, and has more influence than homilies or protestations.

Beth...clung more closely to the dear human love, from which our Father never means us to be weaned, but through which He draws us closer to Himself.

"Teddy, we never can be boy and girl again; the happy old times can't come back, and we mustn't expect it. We are man and woman now...I'm sure you feel this; I see the change in you, and you'll find it in me. I shall miss my boy, but I shall love the man as much, and admire him more, because he means to be what I hoped he would. We can't be little playmates any longer, but we will be brother and sister, to love and help one another all our lives, won't we, Laurie?"
He did not say a word, but took the hand she offered him, and laid his face down on it for a minute, feeling that out of the grave of a boyish passion there had risen a beautiful, strong friendship to bless them both.

"I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world!"

Atlas Shrugged

It took me about 6 months, but I finally finished this 1069-page monster. Parts of it completely confused me, parts of it got me all riled up and angry at the world, parts of it made me grumpy and irritated at the author...but overall, I'm glad I read it. Even though this book is largely about industry, business, and self-promotion, I realized that most of my favorite quotes are the parts about love. Ayn Rand believes in valuing one's own mind and best interests above all else, and she uses these thousand-and-so pages to basically dismiss and spit on popular "morals," like sacrificing oneself for the greater good and spreading the wealth. I disagree with her on most things, but there's no doubt she put a LOT of thought and passion into her ethics, and I respect her for that. She also managed to create an interesting, even slightly touching plot to go with what essentially is a long-winded treatise of her philosophy (...more than I can say for Nietzsche). Anyway, here are my favorite parts:

"Are you saying," he asked slowly, "that I rose in your estimation when you found that I wanted you?"
"Of course."
"That's not the reaction of most people of being wanted."
"It isn't."
"Most people feel that they rise in their own eyes, if others want them."
"I feel that others live up to me, if they want me. And that is the way you feel, too, Hank, about yourself--whether you admit it or not."

"You still love me--even if there's one expression of it that you'll always feel and want, but will not give me any longer. I'm still what I was, and you'll always see it, and you'll always grant me the same response, even if there's a greater one that you grant to another man. No matter what you feel for him, it will not change what you feel for me, and it won't be treason to either, because it comes from the same root, it's the same payment in answer to the same values. No matter what happens in the future, we'll always be what we were to each other, you and I, because you'll always love me."

"People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked. And if one gains the immediate purpose of the lie--the price one pays is the destruction of that which the gain was intended to serve. The man who lies to the world, is the world's slave from then on."

If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn...

Story of an African Farm

Don't read this book--it's very bad. But it has one good quote.

Experience teaches us in a millenium what passion teaches us in an hour.

Me...

Middlemarch Quote #3: Having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers.


As reluctant as I am to admit (but as recent events continue to prove), this is TOTALLY ME. And before reading Middlemarch, I could never quite pinpoint or validate it. Reading this sentence feels as if George Eliot is jumping forward some 150 years in time, sitting next to me, taking my hand, and saying with an amused smile, "Trust me, dear...this is you."

Art Appreciation

It boggles my mind to recall that a mere five years ago, I was quite adamant about not wanting to have children when I grew up. Nowadays, I'm constantly fantasizing and making mental notes about how I want to raise my future kids, provided this dream comes true. My babies are going to grow up on Disney movies, Haydn, the Cosby Show, and Lemony Snicket books. I'm going to make sure that they keep up with current events...that they learn and remember how to ride a bike (unlike me), and that they learn and remember how to speak Chinese (also, sadly, unlike me).
Last weekend walking through Central Park, H and I started talking about how certain kids are so much more cultured/sophisticated, because their parents brought them up that way. They just know way more than the average person about things like politics, opera, and history...not because they're smarter, but because they were exposed to those things when their brains were new and fresh and young. While their parents perhaps prioritized this sort of knowledge, our parents--having immigrated and sacrificed everything so that we could grow up in the US--prioritized instilling in us this sort of sacrifice. It's not that they are less cultured; they just couldn't afford to be visiting museums and watching operas with us while learning English and working multiple jobs. I feel like when I have kids, I want to combine these two priorities, so that my children learn the basics of working hard and being obedient etc. but also go out and learn as much as possible about the world, rather than staying indoors doing homework or practicing piano all day.
I keep coming across books in particular that I really want to introduce to my kids when they're fairly young. Books like In Memoriam, which I'd like to read with them, a few poems per night or something...just because literature teaches certain invaluable lessons that one often can't identify on one's own. I think being exposed to this stuff early on gives anyone a head start on life, so to speak. While I'm REALLY thankful I'm learning these things now, I do wonder if I maybe would have made past decisions with more maturity and wisdom, if only I had discovered these books earlier on.

Which brings me to--MIDDLEMARCH! Middlemarch, by George Eliot, is one of the best books I have ever read. (It also happens to be one of the longest books I've ever read, but it's worth every one of its 837 fine-print pages.) Usually when I read something noteworthy, I underline/dog-ear my favorite quotes and post them here. However, with Middlemarch, this doesn't seem like a good idea because a) I dog-eared practically every other page, and b) lumping all the quotes together wouldn't give each one the loving attention and admiration it deserves. So I will write about one or two quotes per entry. I will admit that most of the time, thanks to my inherent narcissism, a quote becomes my favorite simply because I can relate to it so perfectly. Once in a while, a passage will strike a beautiful chord within me and express things I've been longing to say, put into better words than I could ever devise. It's as if the author is teaching me about myself. Thus, while writing about these quotes, I'm also essentially writing about myself.

So after this circumlocutory preamble/ramble, here is my favorite quote #1: Art is an old language...sometimes the chief pleasure one gets out of knowing them is the mere sense of knowing.
I spent a good couple hours at the Metropolitan Museum a few days ago. There was only time to really look at one exhibit, called "the Steins Collect" (http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2012/steins-collect/). We walked through at least ten rooms full of paintings, reading every single placard next to it. By the end, I was exhausted, but I also felt like I could distinguish a Matisse from a Picasso from a Renoir without much trouble, and that was certainly a significant skill gained. I realized that my sense of satisfaction and happiness from that day at the museum wasn't the appreciation of art itself so much as the appreciation of KNOWING about art. To be honest, I probably spent more time reading placards than actually looking at the paintings they described. My understanding of art is at such an elementary level that I need the placards, the way a cripple needs crutches or a toddler needs training wheels. I can still look at a painting and instinctively feel whether I like it or not, appreciating it blindly (so to speak) without knowing why, but that is much less enjoyable to me...it doesn't feel complete, secure, or memorable. It reminded me of how, oftentimes at concerts, I get the sense that the majority of audiences derive pleasure from simply BEING there and knowing what's going on, rather than being moved by the music itself.
I can understand both sides. I just hope that someday I will know enough about art that I can surpass the mere enjoyment of simply knowing about it.

Lady Audley's Secret

Loved this book...

Favorite Quotes:
He rested his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. The one purpose which had slowly grown up in his careless nature until it had become powerful enough to work a change in that very nature, made him what he had never been before--a Christian; conscious of his own weakness; anxious to keep to the strict line of duty; fearful to swerve from the conscientious discharge of the strange task that had been forced upon him; and reliant on a stronger hand than his own to point the way which he was to go.


The snow lay thick and white upon the pleasant country through which he went; and the young barrister had wrapped himself in so many comforters and railway rugs as to appear a perambulating mass of woolen goods rather than a living member of a learned profession.
Haha! Exactly how I feel when I go outside bundled up in countless layers. :)

How fondly we recollect these solitary days of pleasure, and hope for their recurrence, and try to plan the circumstances that made them bright; and arrange, and predestinate, and diplomatise with fate for a renewal of the remembered joy. As if any joy could ever be built up out of such and such constituent parts! As if happiness were not essentially accidental--a bright and wandering bird, utterly irregular in its migration; with us one summer's day, and for ever gone from us the next!


"So he can be in love, after all. That slow lump of torpidity he calls his heart can beat, I suppose, once in a quarter of a century..."
Ouch.

...this pleasant dream floated off into the great storehouse in which the visions of things that never have been and never are to be, are kept locked and guarded by some stern enchanter, who only turns the keys now and then and opens the door of his treasure-house a little way for the brief delight of mankind.

Wuthering Heights

Favorite Quotes:
He took a seat opposite Catherine, who kept her gaze fixed on him as if she feared he would vanish were she to remove it. He did not raise his to her often; a quick glance now and then sufficed; but it flashed back, each time more confidently, the undisguised delight he drank from hers.


They [Hindley and Linton] had both been fond husbands, and were both attached to their children; and I could not see how they shouldn't both have taken the same road, for good or evil. But, I thought in my mind, Hindley, with apparently the stronger head, has shown himself sadly the worse and weaker man. When his ship struck, the captain abandoned his post; and the crew, instead of trying to save her, rushed into riot and confusion, leaving no hope for their luckless vessel. Linton, on the contrary, displayed the true courage of a loyal and faithful soul; he trusted God; and God comforted him. One hoped, and the other despaired: they chose their own lots, and were righteously doomed to endure them.

Gaskell's Gothic Tales

Favorite Quotes:
The blooming look of the time of flowers, was past and gone; but instead there were even richer tints abroad in the sun-colored leaves, the lichens, the golden blossomed furze; if it was the time of fading, there was a glory in the decay.


By this time the whole table was silent, listening to the captain; it was just one of those chance silences that sometimes occur, without any apparent reason, and often without any apparent consequence.


She could not choose the right words with which to speak to him of her gratitude and friendliness, which yet could never be any feeling nearer and dearer, no more than two parallel lines can ever meet.

Nietzsche and Shakespeare

On the plane ride home, I finally drudged my way to the end of Nietzsche's manifesto, Thus Spake Zarathustra. What a drag. For those who are interested in exploring Nietzsche, do NOT choose this book for your first foray. Much of what he said is entirely against my most core beliefs, but on a more basic level, I simply could not understand what he was going on about a lot of the time. I don't think I've ever read a book that irritated me more, except Voltaire's Candide. (Weird how both these books I read for musical purposes...Bernstein and Strauss.) I couldn't even bring myself to finish it, I was so annoyed...promptly gave it to a friend who's far more cynical and tolerant of endless sarcasm. She enjoyed it very much.
All this being said, there were a few passages in the Nietzsche that I enjoyed enough to dog-ear and share, so here they are:

It is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love.
There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some method in madness.


Marriage: so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is more than those who created it.


His soul become impatient and full of longing for those whom he loved: because he had still much to give them. For this is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.


Will--so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself is still a prisoner. Willing emancipateth: but what is that called which still putteth the emancipator in chains?...that it cannot break time and time's desire--that is the Will's lonesomest tribulation.


Free will and its limits...which brings me to Shakespeare, and my favorite moment in Macbeth:


(as he's facing his imminent and inevitable death, realizing that he has no control over his destiny)
I will not yield, to kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet...though opposed, Yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my war lie shield. Lay on, Macduff, and damn'd be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!" -Macbeth

One of the incredible feats Shakespeare accomplishes is creating characters that captivate their audience, pulling readers along as if by hypnosis, despite how despicable the character may be. We know Macbeth is no saint...he kills people, tricks people, is unmoved by his wife's death...nevertheless, in his last moments as he picks up his sword and vows not to yield even in the face of his destiny (which he finally acknowledges), there's this strange triumph that stirs in my gut and enthusiastic internal cheering (GO MACBETH!).  It's as if Shakespeare is telling us, yes, free will may only exist within the confines of fate, like a tiny inaccessible window in the prison of a pre-written destiny...but these futile fighters of fate are nobler than those who submit.
(Whether I agree with this is a whole different matter.)

Think Denk

Currently sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for my roommate to finish practicing so that I can practice, looking gloomily out the window at a raincloud-infested sky, and revisiting pianist Jeremy Denk's ingenious blog. Here are some of my favorite parts:

It is one good definition of music’s purpose: this idealized notion of emotion, music as preserver or sustainer of emotion, as timeless place where a feeling lasts seemingly forever. Music is so excellent at creating states and spells, places where things can sing themselves out to the last drop. The Romantic era is how we WISH emotions were: endlessly prolongable, leading to satisfying climaxes, etc. etc. But the Classical era is (perhaps) how emotions maybe actually are: subject to inconsistency, wavering, shifting, vanishing, elusive. There is a line between this desire for endlessness and this humorlessness.

The din [of the party] was...surface noise, insecurity, the continuous scratchy distraction, the sip of chardonnay, the fake smile, that made it impossible to be back in the lamplit room with piano in fantasyland … door closed, cup of coffee on shelf nearby, just you and the voiceleading, you and two stubbornly meaningful notes which don’t want to give up their meaning to just any old way of playing them.

Often the food at these things is so beautiful, I think of all the loving effort put into it, I feel sorry for it just sitting there. This transitions seamlessly into wondering how delicious it might be. In short, a combination of pity and gluttony makes me eat.

So totally and completely relatable. :)

Corniness is often a joy that has sat out too long, like a congealed skin on top of a soup. Congealed is the word: whatever elements keep the emotion fresh and moving are missing. Joy goes stale so quickly.

I would give you an audio example from our recent performance but an audience member with an excellent ear for the most profoundly fragile musical moments decided to cough through most of this section.

Hahahaha...

And then he [Brahms] folds everything in an embrace. He heads out to the edges of the keyboard, hugging all possible other pitches between widespread hands. For a moment the embrace is major-ish, (D-F#-A-C#), but only for those couple bars, paradise bars that can’t last, then F-sharp becomes F-natural, world of difference, and the beneficent embrace becomes tinged with sadness, like a wave of sadness, and then, the sadness having broken the embrace, we come slowly down the scale, A, G#, F#, E, D, C#, down the sixth (quintessential waltz-interval, summing everything up while bidding it farewell), each note to be played as the one you never want to leave behind. You can’t do better to express in musical notes how a person reluctantly leaves a hug, having not quite accepted departure and distance.

Just to depress myself further, I looked on a classical music forum, with the topic: what’s funny in classical music? And you get a ream of special examples (Haydn this, Malcolm Arnold that, moments here and there) and then eventually hilariously it gets lost in a very unfunny discussion of Nazism in Wagner. Sigh. No no NO, I want to say, stop it, humor is no special example, it’s not a side stream, it’s not vacuum cleaners and celebrity guests and props, it’s the beating heart, it’s one of the main currents, one of the most wonderful. These composers, through flashes of genius, tremendous insight in timing, nuance, all the tricks of comedians, acrobats, thinkers, clowns, poets … they taught us how to laugh in tones: the only challenge is not to forget their living lesson.

Ministry of Fear

Favorite Quotes:

It was a long time before they told him about the war, and that involved an enormous amount of historical explanation. What seemed odd to him, he found, was not what seemed odd to other people...the fact that we were at war with Italy shook him like an inexplicable catastrophe of nature. "Italy," he exclaimed. Why, Italy was where two of his maiden aunts went every year to paint. He remembered too the Primitives in the National Gallery and Caporetto and Garibaldi, who had given a name to a biscuit, and Thomas Cook's. Then Johns patiently explained about Mussolini.
Ha ha ha.

When he thought of her it was with an absurd breathlessness. It was as if he were waiting again years ago outside...and the girl he loved was coming down the street, and the night was full of pain and beauty and despair because one knew one was too young for anything to come of this...


"Is life really like this?" Rowe asked. Mr. Prentice leant forward with an interested air, as though he were always ready to abandon the particular in favour of the general argument. He said, "This is life, so I suppose one can say it's like life."


Her face looked ugly in the attempt to avoid tears; it was an ugliness which bound him to her more than any beauty could have done; it isn't being happy together, he thought as though it were a fresh discovery, that makes one love--it's being unhappy together.


She looked at him with a kind of middle-aged tenderness, as though they'd grown through love into its later stage.

Conrad, Shaw, and Joyce

More awesome quotes.
I should mention that I take the time to type these out, not because I'm bored and want to show off that I read stuff. It's because a) they generate great ideas, and b) maybe by catching some small snapshot of an author's writing and expression, you'll be encouraged to read a book that will change your life. Also, c) MAYBE someone out there has the same favorite moments of literature that I do, and we can telepathically relish in the deliciousness and intimacy together.
What is it about a certain passage in a book that moves me, that makes me nod and go "mm"? An illuminating realization, a description that puts a smile on your face, or oftentimes, a perfect depiction of something I have felt in the past but lacked the eloquence to articulate on my own.

From Conrad's Heart of Darkness-

No, I don't like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work,--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself, not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.


And the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! They say the hair goes on growing sometimes, but this--ah specimen, was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball--an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and--lo!--he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favorite.


It was a kind of partnership...and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory--like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.


From George Bernard Shaw's sequel to "Pygmalion"-

Eliza...was instinctively aware that she could never obtain a complete grip of him...to put it shortly, she knew that for some mysterious reason he had not the makings of a married man in him, according to her conception of a husband as one to whom she would be his nearest and fondest and warmest interest...to those who have the greatest power of loving, love is a secondary affair...
Gosh, I hope not.

And from James Joyce's The Dead-


She was walking on before him so lightly and so erect that he longed to run after her noiselessly, catch her by the shoulders and say something foolish and affectionate into her ear. She seemed to him so frail that he longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with her. Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.


Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, then fade and wither dismally with age...He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love.

Dickens and Tennyson

In accordance with my New Year's resolution, I've been reading while at the gym, instead of watching The Office reruns like I used to. It's a bit hard to read while bouncing up and down on the treadmill, because I keep accidentally skipping lines and losing my spot, but I still get a lot more done. Here are an assortment of my recent favorite quotes (DON'T skim the poetry!!! My eyes always gloss over anything in verse, by default, but these ones are SO good...):

From Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"-

Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room...wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being  a man of strong imagination, he failed.
Hahaha!!!


"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" said the child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. "To bring you home, home, home!"

From Tennyson's "In Memorium"-

V.
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.


But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.


In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more...


from XXIV.
And is it that the haze of grief
Makes former gladness loom so great?
The lowness of the present state,
That sets the past in this relief?


Or that the past will always win
A glory from its being far;
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein?
...couldn't have said it better myself.

XXVII.
I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage
That never knew the summer woods:


I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfettered by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;


Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.


I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
So THAT'S where that comes from!!! I was so excited when I read it.

From XLVII.
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip
Their wings in tears, and skim away...


From CXXIV.
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answered "I have felt."
Right-brained, and proud. :)

The Case for Christ

Just a note before I copy out my favorite quotes: A few months ago, I was talking to a trusted friend about religion and how hard it is to reach beyond the barrier it sometimes creates. We talked about the loneliness of being the only Christian among close friends, and the desire/wariness to share your faith. A while later, I got a lovely snail mail package from her that contained a book called The Case for Christ. I finished it in 2 days--the fastest I've read a book since those good ol' Harry Potter days. The author was an atheist (Chicago Tribune journalist from Yale) setting out to disprove Christianity through archaeological and biological evidence. After 21 months of research, he came to accept Jesus as a real man who not only changed lives, but who existed/exists as the son of God. I think this book addresses the skeptic in all of us, believer or non-believer...to some degree, everyone needs logic and proof behind their beliefs. It hurts and angers me when people turn away from Christianity without bothering to learn more about it. At the same time, I don't think it's right to latch onto a religion without knowing its history and reliability first. Faith is such a huge determining factor in your life, that none of us should claim to have it figured out until we know a whole lot more about it.
I don't write this entry or recommend this book to change someone's mind. I don't expect atheists to listen to me and say, "You're right! I'm convinced!" What I do hope is that people will take initiative and find the information for themselves before turning away.

Favorite Quotes:
There are religious symbols that are quite meaningful to people--the symbol of Jesus being divine, of the cross, of self-sacrificial love, of the Resurrection. Even though people don't really believe that those things actually happened, they nevertheless can inspire people to live a good life, to overcome existential angst, to realize new potentialities, to resurrect hope in the midst of despair--blah, blah, blah...So these liberals say historical research can't possibly discover the Jesus of faith, because the Jesus of faith is not rooted in history. He's merely a symbol...but listen: Jesus is not a symbol of anything unless he's rooted in history...The theological truth is based on historical truth. I don't want to base my life on a symbol. I want reality, and the Christian faith has always been rooted in reality.


It's like this: if you love a person, your love goes beyond the facts of that person, but it's rooted in the facts about that person. For example, you love your wife because she's gorgeous, she's nice, she's sweet, she's kind. All these things are facts about your wife, and therefore you love her. But your love goes beyond that. You can know all these things about your wife and not be in love with her or put your trust in her, but you do. So the decision go beyond the evidence, yet it is there also on the basis of the evidence. So it is with falling in love with Jesus. To have a relationship with Jesus Christ goes beyond just knowing the historical facts about him, yet it's rooted in the historical facts about him.


If you do something against me, I have the right to forgive you. However, if you do something against me and somebody else comes along and says, "I forgive you," what kind of cheek is that? The only person who can say that sort of thing meaningfully is God himself, because sin, even if it is against other people, is first and foremost a defiance of God.


I go through the books that people write to try to tear down what we believe. That's not fun to do, but I spend the time to look at each objection individually and then to research the context and the wording in the original language...And every single time, the prophecies have stood up and shown themselves to be true.
So here's my challenge to skeptics: don't accept my word for it, but don't accept your rabbi's either. Spend the time to research it yourself. Today nobody can say, "There's no information." There are plenty of books out there to help you.


Jesus intentionally walked into the arms of his betrayer, he didn't resist arrest, he didn't defend himself at his trial--it was clear that he was willingly subjecting himself to humiliating and agonizing torture...So when you ask what motivated him, well, I suppose the answer can be summed up in one word--and that would be love.

And this one is C. S. Lewis, another former skeptic:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say....You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Favorite Quotes:

Perhaps the human soul needs excursions, and must not be denied them. But the point of an excursion is that you come home again.


Logic might be unanswerable because it was so absolutely wrong.


Then one afternoon came Leslie Winter, Squire Winter, as everybody called him: lean, immaculate, and seventy: and every inch a gentleman. Every millimeter, indeed! And with his old-fashioned, rather haw-haw! manner of speaking, he seemed more out-of-date than bag-wigs. Time, in her flight, drops these fine old feathers.


His hand passed over the curves of her body, firmly, without desire, but with soft, intimate knowledge. As she ran back home in the twilight the world seemed a dream; the trees in the park seemed bulging and surging at anchor on a tide, and the heave of the slope to the house was alive.


"Once you've been really fond of a man, you can be affectionate to almost any man, if he needs you at all. But it's not the same thing. You don't really care. I doubt, once you've really cared, if you can ever really care again."

Jude the Obscure

Favorite Quotes:

It was curious, he thought. What was he reserved for? He supposed he was not a sufficiently dignified person for suicide. Peaceful death abhorred him as a subject, and would not take him. What could he do of a lower kind than self-extermination; what was there less noble, more in keeping with his present degraded position? He could get drunk. Of course that was it; he had forgotten. Drinking was the regular stereotyped resource of the despairing worthless. He began to see now why some men boozed at inns.
Haha, ouch.


"The Gospel of Nicodemus is very nice," she went on, to keep him from his jealous thoughts, which she read clearly, as she always did. Indeed when they talked on an indifferent subject, as now, there was ever a second silent conversation passing between their emotions, so perfect was the reciprocity between them.


"I know that women are taught by other women that they must never admit the full truth to a man. But the highest form of affection is based on full sincerity on both sides. Not being men, these women don't know that in looking back on those he has had tender relations with, a man's heart returns closest to her who was the soul of truth in her conduct."


"It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man--that question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the present moment in these uprising times--whether to follow uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays--I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes...it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be beaten."


"Your generous devotion to me is unparalleled, Jude! Your worldly failure, if you have failed, is to your credit rather than to your blame. Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly good. Every successful man is more or less a selfish man. The devoted fail...'Charity seeketh not her own.'"