We see the ink drying on white vellum and in every twirling vowel and slashing consonant we discover the greatest truths of mankind. When did man say goodbye to his animal nature? It was thousands of years ago by the dying embers of a fire that man picked up the cooling charcoal and with sweeping strokes covered the walls of caves with the nature that surrounded him. The pounding hoofs, the flaring nostrils, and the stampede of wild horses, all immortalized in the glittering caves of man’s memory.
Since then, the art mankind has created is an attempt to rekindle a connection with nature that has been irrevocably lost. The literary world resonates with the same nostalgia and the myriad of languages that are captured within the pages of a book are the sum total of all thoughts, dreams, ideas, inspirations, and myths. Books are, without a doubt, mankind’s greatest legacy.
It is always difficult to give oneself up; few persons anywhere ever succeed in doing so, and even fewer transcend the possessive stage to know love for what it actually is: a perpetual discovery, and immersion in the waters of reality, an unending re-creation.”
― Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings “I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein “Tomorrow I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.”
—Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
When the day shall come that we do part,” he said softly, and turned to look at me, “if my last words are not ‘I love you’—you’ll ken it was because I didn’t have time.”
— Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
—Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.
— AA Milne, Winnie the Pooh
Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart
— Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank “There where they learned that courage is not the ability to face your fear, heroically, once, but is the strength to do it day after day. Night after night. Faith without end. Love without border.”
— Sunil Yapa, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“I know it’s a crock of shit. I ain’t offering you happily-ever-after. I’m offering you… happily-maybe-sometimes-ever-after. Sort of. You know, with warts and shit.” -Thayer
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone “And both of them remained floating in an empty universe where the only everyday & eternal reality was love…”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude “One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
“What happens when people open their hearts?”
“They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood “Now it has been said from ancient times that all women who weep may be divided into three sorts. There are those who lift up their voices and their tears flow and this may be called crying; there are those who utter loud lamentations but whose tears do not flow and this may be called howling; there are those whose tears flow but who utter no sound and this may be called weeping.”― Pearl S Buck, The Good Earth “It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.”― Albert Camus, The Stranger
“Well, and what if we give in to our troubles at every step! We would be pitiable creatures indeed to be so weak, for is not a man’s spirit given to him to rise above his misfortunes? As for our wants, they are many and unfilled, for who is so rich or compassionate as to supply them? Want is our companion from birth to death, familiar as the seasons or the earth, varying only in degree. What profit to bewail that which has always been and cannot change?”
― Kamala Markandaya, Nectar in a Sieve “Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth “Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.”
― William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
“His mouth opens. From inside him comes a slow stream, without breath, without interruption. It flows up through his body and out upon me; it passes through the cabin, through the wreck; washing the cliffs and shores of the island, it runs northward and southward to the ends of the earth. Soft and cold, dark and unending, it beats against my eyelids, against the skin of my face.”
― J. M. Coetzee, Foe “I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations “Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things – new experiences, new emotions – and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self.”
― John Banville, The Sea
“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”―W.H Auden, “Stop all the clocks…”
