Share beautiful passages of prose in your favorite fiction.

[midnight-dreary]

“She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, “Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.” And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek."

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu - Carmilla

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@carlb

I, admittedly, have a soft spot for selfless courage and sacrifice. In this vein, I find the oath that men of the Night’s Watch take in A Song of Ice and Fire very moving…

Yes, that struck me, too. Very good.

@BMalion

" Lightly I toss my hat away,
Languidly over my arm let fall…

Cyrano de Bergerac written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand

Oh, yes, definitely. Thanks.

[TreacherousCretin]

I couldn’t begin to try selecting examples from it, but James Dickey’s Deliverance is the book that stands out for me.
Dickey of course was a renowned poet who happened to write three novels, and Deliverance is a virtuosic display of elegant wordmanship.

[epersimmon]

@InternetLegend

I’ve always loved this passage from Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying:

I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other; and that sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.

There’s just something about all those words that describe how words distance us from the reality of life that’s always really gotten to me.

My favorite line is also from “As I Lay Dying,” and I’ve never forgotten it:

On the dark floor their feet clump awkwardly, as though for a very long time they have not walked on floors.

I may have the punctuation wrong. I don’t have the book, just the memory.

[KarlGauss]

@KarlGauss

Perhaps not the most beautiful passage, but, when I read it, certainly one that impressed me more than any other I could recall.

From, ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ by James Joyce (setting: the priest admonishes young boys that they will suffer for all eternity in the fires of Hell should they ever ‘cause the saints to cry’ by masturbating):

Please click to read the paragraph (a bit long for me to type out with my one finger hacking and, alas, the source does not seem to permit copy and pasting of the text).

Probably not too many people are still following this thread, but I eventually came up with most of the quote (it’s missing the first part where Joyce emphasizes the unbearable pain of Hell). He continues:

@James Joyce

For ever! For all eternity! Not for a year or for an age but for ever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness; and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away, and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time the mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would scarcely have begun.

[BrainGlutton]

Incomparably less large and vast than the Russian Empire, incomparably less powerful than the German Empire, incomparably less sophisticated than the Austro-Hungarian Empire – still Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, its mere name a subject for risibility elsewhere, was his empire, his native land. It may not have functioned very well? so much the more was he pleased that it functioned at all. Its Secret Police was a joke? so much the more he too would enjoy the joke; no one laughed at the Secret Polices in the other empires. Its many languages rivaled Babel or Pentecost? let them: at least here no schoolboy was flogged for praying in whatsoever minor mother tongue. One empire had already, fairly recently, gone from the political map of Europe; and although the name of Bonaparte still rang like a tocsin here and there, it was uncertain that the Prince Imperial would himself ever ring it successfully.

Day by day others asked, how fared their country’s wheat compared with Russian wheat, its butter with Danish butter, its timber with Carpathian timber, its tar with Baltic tar, its cloth with English cloth? Day by day the same spokes of the universal wheel flashed by: love, sorrow, terror, death, success, failure, hunger, joy, growth, decay, weakness, strength: the wheel turned and turned and turned: nothing stayed the same, no one bathed twice in the same flowing water for the water had flowed on and flowed away. There is no star at the pole of the universe, young Dr. Eszterhazy recollected the ancient astronomer; and if there was and long had been but blankness in the comparable area of his own country, then might there not be a space and place for him? What he hoped for, others did not even think of; what others did not think, might he not think of?

And after thinking, do?

– “The Autogondola Invention,” The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy, by Avram Davidson,

[BrainGlutton]

@Meatros

HP Lovecraft - Call of Cthulhu:

A, yes, Lovecraft! “The Festival”:

So I read again that hideous chapter, and shuddered doubly because it was indeed not new to me. I had seen it before, let footprints tell what they might; and where it was I had seen it were best forgotten. There was no one—in waking hours—who could remind me of it; but my dreams are filled with terror, because of phrases I dare not quote. I dare quote only one paragraph, put into such English as I can make from the awkward Low Latin.

“The nethermost caverns,” wrote the mad Arab, “are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl."

“The Rats in the Walls”:

My searchlight expired, but still I ran. I heard voices, and yowls, and echoes, but above all there gently rose that impious, insidious scurrying; gently rising, rising, as a stiff bloated corpse gently rises above an oily river that flows under endless onyx bridges to a black, putrid sea. Something bumped into me—something soft and plump. It must have been the rats; the viscous, gelatinous, ravenous army that feast on the dead and the living. . . . Why shouldn’t rats eat a de la Poer as a de la Poer eats forbidden things? . . . The war ate my boy, damn them all . . . and the Yanks ate Carfax with flames and burnt Grandsire Delapore and the secret . . . No, no, I tell you, I am not that daemon swineherd in the twilit grotto! It was not Edward Norrys’ fat face on that flabby, fungous thing! Who says I am a de la Poer? He lived, but my boy died! . . . Shall a Norrys hold the lands of a de la Poer? . . . It’s voodoo, I tell you . . . that spotted snake . . . Curse you, Thornton, I’ll teach you to faint at what my family do! . . . ’Sblood, thou stinkard, I’ll learn ye how to gust . . . wolde ye swynke me thilke wys? . . . Magna Mater! Magna Mater! . . . Atys . . . Dia ad aghaidh ’s ad aodann . . . agus bas dunach ort! Dhonas ’s dholas ort, agus leat-sa! . . . Ungl . . . ungl . . . rrrlh . . . chchch . . .

[BrainGlutton]

‘Exactly,’ said Puck. ‘Can you wonder that the People of the Hills don’t care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your-head set of impostors? Butterfly wings, indeed! I’ve seen Sir Huon and a troop of his people setting off from Tintagel Castle for Hy-Brasil in the teeth of a sou’-westerly gale, with the spray flying all over the castle, and the Horses of the Hill wild with fright. Out they’d go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they’d be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind again. Butterfly-wings! It was Magic—Magic as black as Merlin could make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing mermaids in it. And the Horses of the Hill picked their way from one wave to another by the lightning flashes! That was how it was in the old days!’

– Puck of Pook’s Hill, Rudyard Kipling

[tadtooornamental]

“We are loping sequences of chemical conversions, acting ourselves converted. We are twists of genes acting ourselves twisted; we are wicks of burning neuroses acting ourselves wicked. And nothing to be done about it. And nothing to be done about it.”

Son of a Witch by Gregory Macquire

This line just stuck in my head- it’s beautiful!

[Maserschmidt]

@Skald_the_Rhymer

By Papa Hemingway, if I recall aright.

Did Ernest Hemingway Write a Six-Word Story to Win a Bet?

[Jimmy_Chitwood]

Ulysses:

Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an open copybook. His tangled hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a snail’s bed.

He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the headline. Beneath were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature with blind loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal.

-- Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them to you, sir.

Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility.

-- Do you understand how to do them now? he asked.

-- Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Deasy said I was to copy them off the board, sir.

-- Can you do them yourself? Stephen asked.

-- No, sir.

Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped. 

Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by algebra that Shakespeare’s ghost is Hamlet’s grandfather. Sargent peered askance through his slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the lumberroom: the hollow knock of a ball and calls from the field.

[mbh]

Aaaaaarrrrrgggghhh!!! The books I want to quote are in storage! Can any Roger Zelazny fans give me a hand here?

One passage from Nine Princes in Amber. In the scene where Corwin cures his amnesia, and remembers Amber.

One passage from The Guns of Avalon, right after Corwin kills Melkin.
It begins “And that was how we met, Lorraine and I, in a land called Lorraine . . . "
and it ends " . . . until that day, I will not wash my hands, nor let them stand idle.”

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Maserschmidt

Did Ernest Hemingway Write a Six-Word Story to Win a Bet? | Snopes.com

What have I told you about bothering me with facts?

[BrainGlutton]

All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they’d grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, forming integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain’t what it used to be.

The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.

– Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

[Elendil_s_Heir]

“It is a distressing fact about political decisions that there are people who make them. Distressing, that is, to the considerable number of other people who would like to, but don’t.” - Ben Pimlott, Frustrate Their Knavish Tricks (the title is from the second verse of “God Save the Queen”)

[Tanaqui]

All beautiful quotes, indeed! I’ve found some good ideas for future reading. These kinds of posts are always fun for me because although I love to read, I’ve never read much of the classics. It’s always good to get a reminder that some books are classics for a reason!

For me, I’ll quote a passage in a book that moved me greatly. I think it’s because it’s about dealing with depression, at a time when I was depressed–not the kind of depression that comes from chemical imbalance, or that needs to be treated with medication, but the more ordinary unhappiness of everyday life, that can sometimes, nonetheless, be almost too heavy to bear.

For awhile every time I got on the train I’d see one of those ads. “Una luz brillara en tu camina. Descubre lo que te has perdido.” A brilliant light in your path. Discover what you have lost.

The light angles across Brooklyn, red now. It comes through the train windows. Sunset used to depress me. But I learned in Baffin Island, you’ve just got to remember the light, keep it inside you, and wait. The sun comes back every morning.

From Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang.

[chrisk]

From chapter 12 of “The Farthest Shore,” by Ursula K. LeGuin:

“My name is no use to you,” Ged said. “You have no power over me at all. I am a living man; my body lies on the beach of Selidor, under the sun, on the turning earth. And when that body dies, I will be here; but only in name, in name alone, in shadow. Do you not understand? Did you never understand, you who called up so many shadows from the dead, who summoned all the hosts of the perished, even my lord Erreth-Akbe, wisest of us all? Did you not understand that he, even he, is but a shadow and a name? His death did not diminish life. Nor did it diminish him. He is there – there, not here! Here is nothing, dust and shadows. There, he is the earth and sunlight, the leaves of trees, the eagle’s flight. He is alive. And all who ever died, live; they are reborn and have no end, nor will there ever be an end. All, save you. For you would not have death. You lost death, you lost life, in order to save yourself. Yourself! Your immortal self! What is it? Who are you?”

“You exist: without name, without form. You cannot see the light of day; you cannot see the dark. You sold the green earth and the sun and stars to save yourself. But you have no self. All that which you sold, that is yourself. You have given everything for nothing. And so now you seek to draw the world to you, all that light and life you lost, to fill up your nothingness. But it cannot be filled. Not all the songs of earth, not all the stars of heaven, could fill your emptiness.”

(That’s two passages, separated by a dozen short lines of dialog that aren’t so beautiful, though rather cool in context.)