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If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty one --
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds.
note: this was supposedly quoted by J. Robert Oppenheimer on July 16, 1945 when the first atomic bomb was tested
-Hindu Spiritual
Bhagavad Gita
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Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.
-Dante Alighieri
Divine Comedy, The
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Avarice, envy, pride,
Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all
On Fire.
-Dante Alighieri
Divine Comedy, The
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As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.
-Maya Angelou
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Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.
-Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
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In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.
-Charles Baudelaire
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This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.
-William Blake
The Everlasting Gospel
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I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike
-Harold Bloom
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Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!
A farewell, and then forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me,
Dark despair around benights me.
-Robert Burns
Ae Fond Kiss
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The great Creator to revere
Must sure become the creature;
But still the preaching cant forbear,
And ev'n the rigid feature:
Yet ne'er with wits profane to range
Be complaisance extended;An atheist laugh's a poor exchange
For deity offended.
-Robert Burns
Epistle to a Young Friend, An
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'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print. A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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And nice to have seen you, Sue. Good luck, he called after her as she disappeared down the path, a pretty girl in a hurry, her smooth hair swinging, shining - just such a young woman as Nancy might have been. Then, starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.
-Truman Capote
The closing of In Cold Blood
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In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest; -- guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time.
-Thomas Carlyle
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'Tis an old saying, the Devil lurks behind the cross. All is not gold that glitters. From the tail of the plough, Bamba was made King of Spain; and from his silks and riches was Rodrigo cast to be devoured by the snakes.
-Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote
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Over the river and through the wood,
To grandfather's house we go;
The horse knows the way
To carry the sleigh,
Through the white and drifted snow.
(first verse)
-Lydia Maria Child
The New-England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving Day from Flowers for Children, 1845
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The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.
-Elizabeth Drew
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The people have a right supreme
To make their kings, for Kings are made for them.
All Empire is no more than Pow'r in Trust,
Which when resum'd, can be no longer just.
Successionm for the general good design'd,
In its own wrong a Nation cannot bind.
-John Dryden
Absalom and Achitophel
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This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
Hollow Men, The
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I always read the last page of a book first so that if I die before I finish I'll know how it turned out.
-Nora Ephron
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The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.
-Robert Frost
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
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The dancing pair that simply sought renown,
By holding out to tire each other down;
The swain mistrustless of his smutted face,While secret laughter titter'd round the place;
The bashful virgin's side-long looks of love,
The matrons glance that would those looks reprove:
These were thy charms, sweet village; sports like these,
With sweet succession, taught e'en toil to please;
These were thy bowers their cheerful influence shed,
These were thy charms -- but all these charms are fled.
-Oliver Goldsmith
Deserted Village, The
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Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.
-Thomas Gray
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
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It was a pleasant caf
-Ernest Hemingway
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At last is Hector stretch'd upon the plain,
Who fear'd no vengeance for Patroclus slain:
Then, Prince! You should have fear'd, what now you feel;
Achilles absent was Achilles still:
Yet a short space the great avenger stayed,
Then low in dust thy strength and glory laid.
-Homer
Iliad, The
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Prometheus is action. Hamlet is hesitation. In Prometheus the obstacle is exterior; in Hamlet it is interior. In Prometheus the will is securely nailed down by nails of brass and cannot get loose; besides, it has by its side two watchers
-Victor Hugo
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Books about Literary
