Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[issybird]

"...for as hollow vessels produce a far more musical sound in falling than those which are substantial, so it will oftentimes be found that sentiments which have nothing in them make the loudest ringing in the world, and are the most relished."

— Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge

[Dr. Drib]

"What, me worry?"

-- Alfred E. Newman (AKA: Melvin Cowsnofsky, Mel Haney, Melvin Sturdley, Moxie Cowznofski, Melvin Coznowski) | Mad

[covingtoncat73]

"'Poets are listeners, if they are not intoxicated. But novelists'—Madame Crommelynck did a yuck face—'is schizoids, lunatics, liars.'"

~Black Swan Green, David Mitchell

[issybird]

"Some man wish evil and accomplish it,
But most men, when they work in that machine,
Just let it happen somewhere in the wheels.
The fault is no decisive, villainous knife
But the dull saw that is the routine mind."

— Stephen Vincent Benét, John Brown's Body

[AlexBell]

'He often said that to make people do their best, and even to keep them fairly honest, it was necessary to excite their selfish desires first.'

by Emile Zola, in The Ladies' Paradise

[John F]

I liked this one:

... Let things sit on your heart. You will learn of them by their weight. ...

From Bucky F*cking Dent by David Duchovny. I believe it is an original quote; doing a Google I didn't find any other sources.

[AlexBell]

'... action contains its own recompense. To act, to create, to struggle against facts, to overcome them or be overthrown by them, all human health and joy consists in that!'

from The Ladies' Delight by Emile Zola, translated by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

[covingtoncat73]

"'I’ll pass,' [on reading the news] Jeanette said. 'Sometimes I see something that makes me wish I was dead,' Angel said matter-of-factly. 'Or wish everbody else was.'"

~Sleeping Beauties, Stephen and Owen King

[WT Sharpe]

John and I shared a room, and his future partner, Linda, would join us for lengthy chats. What we discussed was the new zeitgeist. I don't know how it got to this bedroom in Aspen, but it was creeping everywhere simultaneously. I didn't yet know its name, but found out later it was called Flower Power, and I was excited to learn that we were now living in the Age of Aquarius, an age when, at least astrologically, the world would be taken over by macramé.
~ Steve Martin (August 14, 1945 - ), Born Standing Up

[badgoodDeb]

LOL! Ah, now I see the source, and the quote makes total sense!

[issybird]

"It is so pleasant to have things told to one, for one need not listen, and yet feels the benefit of information."

— Angela Thirkell, Coronation Summer

[Greg Anos]

You know you are over the target when you start picking up flak. . .

-Bob Greenyer

[astrangerhere]

It is true that people can be ‘brought together’ by catastrophe, and it is human to look to this as a consolation. But the balance of disaster is never positive.

Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone | Richard Lloyd Parry

[issybird]

' "I shall take the first that comes after I have quite made up my mind. You'll think it very horrible, but that is really what I shall do. After all, a husband is very much like a house or a horse. You don't take your house because it's the best house in the world, but because just then you want a house. You go and see a house, and if it's very nasty you don't take it. But if you think it will suit pretty well, and if you are tired of looking about for houses, you do take it. That's the way one buys one's horses,— and one's husbands." '

- Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn

[AlexBell]

'Yes, a youthful, glorious, bold affair. Death, life, conflict, defeat, triumph, love, freedom, country ... Good God, grant as much to all of us!'

Ivan Turgenev, in On the Eve