81 Quotes About Classic

…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible–magic to make the sanest man go mad. Homer

Jude leaped out of arm's reach, and walked along the trackway weeping--not from the pain, though that was keen enough; not from the perception of the flaw in the terrestrial scheme, by which what was good for God's birds was bad for God's gardener; but with the awful sense that he had wholly disgraced himself before he had been a year in the parish, and hence might be a burden to his great-aunt for life. Thomas Hardy

Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it’s born with us the day that we are born. Homer

They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another. With the exception, perhaps, of Admiral and Mrs. Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy, (Anne could allow no other exception even among the married couples) there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so simliar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become aquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement. Jane Austen

You are going, Jane?""I am going, sir."" You are leaving me?"" Yes."" You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?" What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard was it to reiterate firmly, "I am going! "" Jane! "" Mr. Rochester.""Withdraw then, I consent; but remember, you leave me here in anguish. Go up to your own room, think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings; think of me." He turned away, he threw himself on his face on the sofa. "Oh, Jane! my hope, my love, my life! " broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a deep, strong sob. Unknown

You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat–coward! Homer

Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one–so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claim–the greater man. Homer

But now, as it is, sorrows, unending sorrows must surge within your heart as well–for your own son’s death. Never again will you embrace him stiding home. My spirit rebels– I’ve lost the will to live, to take my stand in the world of men– Homer

He suffered greatly from being shut up among all these people whose stupidity and absurdities wounded him all the more cruelly since, being ignorant of his love, incapable, had they known of it, of taking any interest, or of doing more than smile at it as at some childish joke, or deplore it as an act of insanity, they made it appear to him in the aspect of a subjective state which existed for himself alone, whose reality there was nothing external to confirm; he suffered overwhelmingly, to the point at which even the sound of the instruments made him want to cry, from having to prolong his exile in this place to which Odette would never come, in which no one, nothing was aware of her existence, from which she was entirely absent. Marcel Proust

A feeling of liberation should contain a bracing feeling of negation, in which liberation itself is not negated. In the moment a captive lion steps out of his cage, he possesses a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds to him; the world of the cage, and the world outside the cage. Now he is free. He roars. He attacks people. He eats them. yet he is not satisfied, for there is no third world that is neither the world of the cage nor the world outside the cage. Etsuko however, had in her heart not the slightest interest in these matters. Her soul knew nothing but affirmation. . Yukio Mishima

I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter. Francine Prose

It is fatal to suppose the great writer was too wise or too profound for us ever to understand him; to think of art so is not to praise but to murder it, for the next step after that tribute will be neglect of the masterpiece. John Erskine

Come then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in each other. Homer

You, you insolent brazen bitch–you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face? Homer

There is remedy for all things except death - Don Quixote De La Mancha Unknown

Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known Oscar Wilde

Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.'' You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.''Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?'' Before either.'' I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry, ' said the lad.' Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?'' I can't, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do.'' Well, then you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.''I should like that awfully.' The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. 'I shall stay with the real Dorian, ' he said, sadly. Oscar Wilde

The commercial work of today is the classics of tomorrow. Orson Scott Card

God isn't going to scribble across the sky. "The shark is gone. Peter Benchley

They ordered punch. They drank it. It was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous term, jewelled, exotic phrases rise to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and cleared the head; it filled the soul with well-being; it disposed the mind at once to utter wit, and to appreciate the wit of others; it had the vagueness of music and the precision of mathematics. Only one of its qualities was comparable to anything else; it had the warmth of a good heart; but its taste, its smell, its feel, were not to be described in words. W. Somerset Maugham

I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you - or else I pretended to. I am really not quite sure which - I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other. Henrik Ibsen

I have seen or heard of no other man whom destiny treated with such enmity as it did Philoktetes Sophocles

Nobody could catch cold by the sea; nobody wanted appetite by the sea; nobody wanted spirits; nobody wanted strength. Sea air was healing, softening, relaxing -- fortifying and bracing -- seemingly just as was wanted -- sometimes one, sometimes the other. If the sea breeze failed, the seabath was the certain corrective; and where bathing disagreed, the sea air alone was evidently designed by nature for the cure. Jane Austen

Jonah-John-if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still-not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places, at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second, at each appointed place this Jonah was there. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. . Henry David Thoreau

I liked to call myself a poet and had affected a habit of reading classical texts (in translation, of course — I was a lazy student). I would ride the Greyhound for thirty-six hours down from the Midwest to Leechfield, then spend days dressed in black in the scalding heat of my mother’s front porch reading Homer (or Ovid or Virgil) and waiting for someone to ask me what I was reading. No one ever did. People asked me what I was drinking, how much I weighed, where I was living, and if I had married yet, but no one gave me a chance to deliver my lecture on Great Literature. . Mary Karr

He had so long since ceased to direct his life toward any ideal goal, and had confined himself to the pursuit of quotidian satisfactions, that he had come to believe, though without ever formally stating his belief even to himself that he would remain all his life in that condition, which only death could alter. Marcel Proust

And what does a person with such romantic temperament seek in the study of the classics?" If by romantic you mean solitary and introspective, I think romantics are frequently the best classicists. Donna Tartt

There are people who, the more you do for them, the less they will do for themseselves. Jane Austen

A classic is a book that has never finished what it wants to say. Italo Calvino

Read the great books, gentlemen, ” Mr. Monte said one day. “Just the great ones. Ignore the others. There’s not enough time. Pat Conroy

I gather, " he added, "that you've never had much time to study the classics?"" That is so."" Pity. Pity. You've missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the classics, if I had my way." Poirot shrugged his shou Agatha Christie

Poirot, watching him, felt suddenly a doubt--an uncomfortable twinge. Was there, here, something that he had missed? Some richness of the spirit? Sadness crept over him. Yes, he should have become acquainted with the classics. Long ago. Now, alas, it was too late.... Agatha Christie

I have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall.. .. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with.. .. So they gave up looking. J.d. Salinger

All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone. Jane Austen

And his good wife will tear her cheeks in grief, his sons are orphans and he, soaking the soil red with his own blood, he rots away himself–more birds than women flocking round his body! Homer

All is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most… . Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Now life is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that's the basis of the whole deception. Now man is still not what he should be. There will e a new man, happy and proud. Whoever doesn't care whether he lives or doesn't live, he himself will be God. And that other God will no longer be.'' So, that other God does exist, in your opinion?'' He doesn't exist, but he does exist. In the stone there' no pain, but in the fear of the stone there is pain. God is the pain of the fear of death. Whoever conquers pain and fear will himself become God. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You are a curse in my life! Charles Perrault

There is no life here but the slow death of days, and so when the evil falls on the town, its coming seems almost preordained, sweet and morphic. It is almost as though the town knows the evil was coming and the shape it would take. Stephen King

The town knew about darkness. It knew about the darkness that comes on the land when rotation hides the land from the sun, and about the darkness of the human soul. The town is an accumulation of three parts which, in sum, are greater than the sections. The town is the people who live there, the buildings which they have erected to den or do business in, and it is the land. Stephen King

I tell you I must go! ” I retorted, roused to something like passion. “Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?–a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you, –and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;–it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal, –as we are! . Unknown

Truth is such a rare thing it is delightful to tell it, Emily Dickinson

What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering. For weeks, Marianne, I've had this pressing on me without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature. It was forced on me by the very person whose prior claims ruined all my hope. I have endured her exultations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you. Jane Austen

And when long years and seasons wheeling brought around that point of time ordained for him to make his passage homeward, trials and dangers, even so, attended him even in Ithaca, near those he loved. Homer

I have a Greek-American friend who named her daughter "Nike" and is often asked why she chose to name her offspring after a sneaker. Rebecca Goldstein

By reading older books we get a taste of the conversation of Heaven. John Mark Reynolds

Either I'm changing very quickly, and everything is standing still, or I'm the one standing still and everything is changing around me. Either way, I'm out of joint with the world. Bernie Su

Think of this- that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other. A.S. Byatt

They did go on so, don't you think, those Victorian poets, they took themselves so horribly seriously, " he said, pushing the lift button, summoning it from the depths. As it creaked up, Blackadder said, "That's not the worst thing a human being can do, take himself seriously. A.S. Byatt

I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write. A.S. Byatt

And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre. George Orwell

Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, Her ashes new-create another heir As great in admiration as herself. William Shakespeare

- Ay! Thornton o' Marlborough Mill, as we call him.- He is one of the masters you are striving with, is he not? what sort of master is he? - Did yo' ever see a bulldog? Set a bulldog on hindlegs, and dress him up in coat and breeches, and yo'n just getten John Thornton. Elizabeth Gaskell

When I say to the Moment flying;' Linger a while -- thou art so fair! ' Then bind me in thy bonds undying, And my final ruin I will bear! Unknown

When sonneteering Wordsworth re-creates the landing of Mary Queen of Scots at the mouth of the Derwent -Dear to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed, The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore- he unveils nothing less than a canvas by Rubens, baroque master of baroque masters; this is the landing of a TRAGIC Marie de Medicis.Yet so receptive was the English ear to sheep- Wordsworth's perverse 'Enough of Art' that it is not any of these works of supreme art, these master-sonnets of English literature, that are sold as picture postcards, with the text in lieu of the view, in the Lake District! it is those eternally, infernally sprightly Daffodils. Brigid Brophy

By the Angel, it just crushed Sophocles, " noted Will. "Has no one respect for the classics these days? Cassandra Clare

And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever. Therefore as portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men, and while I endeavor by these to portray their lives, may be free to leave more weighty matters and great battles to be treated of by others. Plutarch

When Henry handed her a cup of punch she whispered, "If you want to go on with the seniors or anything I'll be alright." Henry smiled at her. "You're my date, Scout. Harper Lee

Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, Teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul's bright torch as fast as it is kindled! . Charles Dickens

Time, which sees all things, has found you out. Sophocles

In order to witness clearly the march of humanity from its inception to the present moment, an understanding of how humankind has held encounter with the divine as central is crucial. Ancient humanity provides us with an excellent laboratory for gaining such an understanding. Roger D. Woodard

Lingerer, my brain is on fire with impatience; and you tarry so long! Unknown

And here, I believe, the wit is generally misunderstood. In reality, it lies in desiring another to kiss your a-- for having just before threatened to kick his; for I have observed very accurately, that no one ever desires you to kick that which belongs to himself, nor offers to kiss this part in another. Henry Fielding

Have any sheep been seen walking out of the Library with seagoing adventurers clinging to their wool? Lindsey Davis

Learn whom God has ordered you to be, and in what part of human affairs you have been placed. Unknown