I am sorry, two sentences, but, boy, is it worth it.
Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision, – he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath – “The horror! The horror!”
That one sentence has occasionally left me wishing I were English.
Console yourself with the fact that these days you need to replace “landing grounds”, “fields” and “hills” with “pub”, “curry house” and “football terraces”, and “surrender” with “be sober”.
Said to Lucy in The Godfather? :dubious:
“… the PA system was moaning unctuously, like a lady hippopotamus
reading A. E. Housman …”
– James Blish, They Shall Have Stars
Dorothy Parker, writing a book review wrote:
“The covers of this book are too far apart.”
Apparently she didn’t like it much…
“He wore the unmistakable look of a man about to be present at a row between women, and only a wet cat in a strange backyard bears itself with less jauntiness than a man faced by such a prospect.”
PG Wodehouse
“Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters, and hamsters don’t love anybody.”
I heard that quoted in a book review, and I don’t know who wrote the book.
I loved this scene from Renaissance Man. Even though it’s not perfectly quoted (he was trying to remember it on the spot and under pressure, after all), I think I found it moving because it was more emoTION and less emoTING. I loved the drill sergeant’s reaction as he realized, perhaps for the first time, that Shakespeare was still relevant to the soldier’s heart.
I love these two, I have them up in the loo. I’ll contribute another that I have there:
“Day by day and night by night we were together–all else has long been forgotten by me”
by Walt Whitman, from Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City
I love it because it’s so recognisable to me. I have a terrible memory for events, but I’ll remember that I was there with someone I love. When Whitman puts it like that, I don’t feel so bad about having a bad memory. Yeah, I forgot that we went to that museum, we went to that play, that we climbed that hill and picnicked under that tree, but in my memory we were together and I don’t care about the rest. We were together.
Now I’m going to read through the thread again and see if there is another nice one to put up in the loo! 
“It doesn’t mean that much to me to mean that much to you…” Neil Young
In my case, it was:
“We would like to see more of your work” – George Scithers.
It’s apparently a quote from Alice Thomas Ellis:
Thank you for the recommendations.
I’ve given it a stab or two.
“My Lords, if I were an American the way I am an Englishman and foreign soldiers were on my soil I would never lay down my arms, never, never, never.” -William Pitt
So often true throughout history and yet advice so often ignored.
“Let us step into the night, and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure!”
Wow, I am honored to be mentioned in this thread. Thank you!
Kudos where due to Rutger Hauer, who wrote much of that speech and improvised some changes the night before it was shot.
:eek:
" My name is Asher Lev, the Asher Lev, about whom you have read in newspapers and magazines, about whom you talk so much at your dinner affairs and cocktail parties, the notorious and legendary Lev of the Brooklyn Cruxifixion."
The opening sentence of the most important book I have ever read. " My Name Is Asher Lev ", by Chaim Potok.
Just because I like the sound of it… and because it makes you think about deep stuff, Clarence’s dream from Richard III:
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw’d upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scatter’d in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men’s skulls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
Which woo’d the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mock’d the dead bones that lay scatter’d by.
Oh, as I posted this, I remembered my real favorite. Repeated many times in Moby Dick: “Surely all this is not without meaning.”