What is the most powerfull quote in literature for you?

[Berzerker]

"Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" - attributed to Jesus

[Sava]

Originally posted by Berzerker
"Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" - attributed to Jesus

taken from ancient hindu scriptures...

[Guynemer]

What a piece of work is a man; how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel; in apprehension how like a god!


And, naturally, the two quotes in my sig.

[MichaeltheGreat]

"Give 'em the cold steel boys, give 'em the cold steel!"

Aaaah, damn, you pansies wanted literature.

[PLATO]

"Being a hero is not dying for your country...it is making some other poor dumb son of a b1tch die for his"

It ain't literature, but it should be.

[Mr. Oobir]

From Siddhartha:

Siddhartha said nothing; his eyes gazed silently into hers.

"You have attained it?" she asked. "You have found peace?"

He smiled and placed his hand on hers.

"I see it," she said, "I see it. I too will find peace."

"You have found it," whispered Siddhartha.

Kamala gazed steadily into his eyes. She recalled wanting to go on a pilgrimage to Gautama, to see the face of the Perfect Man, to breathe his peace. And now instead she had found Siddhartha, and that was good, it was just as good as if she had seen the other. She wanted to tell him, but her tongue no longer obeyed her will. Silently she looked at him, and he saw the light fading in her eyes. When the final pain filled her eyes and broke, when the final shudder ran through her limbs, his finger closed her lids.

[Ben Kenobi]

See my sig.

Otherwise, I say Solzhenitsyn.

"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

The Gulag Archipelago

[St Leo]

Random Greg Egan quotation time.

"But I didn't go spiralling down. Because there is no abyss. There is no yawning chasm waiting to swallow us up, when we learn that there is no god, that we're animals like any other animal, that the universe has no purpose, that our souls are made of the same stuff as water and sand... If you desperately passionately want to plummet into the abyss, of course it's possible -- but only if you work hard. Only if you will the entire thing into being. Only if you manufacture every last centimetre of it, on your way down."
- Greg Egan, Distress

[Berzerker]

Sava -

taken from ancient hindu scriptures...

I think that was Buddha, and as Obiwan has pointed out, Buddha's version was slightly different - don't do to others what you don't want others doing to you. Jesus' version placed the emphasis on taking action towards others, not refraining from acting in certain ways.

[Ben Kenobi]

Well, I must credit C.S. Lewis, he says that in the Abolition of Man

[Mr. Oobir]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
See my sig.

Otherwise, I say Solzhenitsyn.

How did I forget Solzhenitsyn? This is also a favorite quote from The Gulag Archipelago:

"What cruel and evil Saltychikha, what utterly repulsive and infamous serf-owner would have killed six peasants for their miserable little clippings of hay? If one had dared to beat them with birch switches even once, we would know about it and read about it in school and curse that name. But now, heave the corpes into the water, and pretty soon the surface is all smooth again and no one's the wiser. And one must cherish the hope that someday documents will confirm the report of my witness, who is still alive. Even if Stalin had killed no others, I believe he deserved to be drawn and quartered just for the lives of those six Tsarskoye Selo peasants!"

[Bosh]

Consider Cripple Shu. His chin is down by his navel His shoulders stick up above his head. The bones at the base of his neck point to the sky. The five pipes of his spine are on top: his two thighs form ribs. Yet by sewing and washing he is able to fill his mouth; by shaking the fortune-telling sticks he earns enough to feed ten. When the authorities draft soldiers, a cripple can walk among them confidently flapping his sleeves; when they are conscripting work gangs, cripples are excused because of their infirmity. When the authorities give relief grain to the ailing a cripple gets three measures along with undles of firewood. Thus one whose form is crippled can nurture his body and live out the years Heaven grants him. Think that he could do if his virtue was crippled too!

the Chuang Tzu

[Agathon]

"Countless terrible things walk the earth, but none as terrible as man." - Sophocles

[St Leo]

Along those lines...

"Next time on the Scary Door: A mad scientist fuses together all of the evilest animals in existence. The end product? Man." - Futurama

Heh.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Sava -

I think that was Buddha, and as Obiwan has pointed out, Buddha's version was slightly different - don't do to others what you don't want others doing to you. Jesus' version placed the emphasis on taking action towards others, not refraining from acting in certain ways.

Both:

The Mahabharata:

"This is the sum of duty: do naught to others which if done to thee would cause thee pain."

And the Buddhist Udana-Varqa:

"Hurt not others with that which pains yourself."

It is also to be found in the Talmud:

"What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow men. That is the entire Law, all the rest is commentary."

and in Zoroastrianism:

"That nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self."

Dadistan-i-Dinik

And in Islam:

"No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself."

from the Hadiths.

The passage from the Gospel of Matthew reads:

"All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law of the prophets."