What is the most powerfull quote in literature for you?

[Japher]

"Did I see it? I saw it. What more did I want? What I really wanted was rivets, by heaven! Rivets. "

, Don't know what that is from? Of course you do, if not read this:

"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. 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!'

"I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were dining in the mess-room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored. He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the manager's boy put his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of scathing contempt:

"`Mistah Kurtz--he dead.'

"

[monolith94]

Heart of Darkness is good, but Youth is better.

[Ramo]

I don't know, but a passage in a short story I read a few months ago called "Old Music and the Slave Woman" (a story about an emmisary from a trade alliance of planets, in a world where a civil war over slavery is going on) by UK Leguin seems damn powerful to me:

"You said the bondspeople on a place like this, if they didn't join the Uprising, were collaborators, " Edsan said.
Tema was motionless, but listening.
"You don't think any of them might just not have understood what was going on? And still don't understand? This is a benighted place, zadyo. Hard to even imagine freedom here."
The young man resisted answering for a while, but Esdan talked on, trying to make some contact with him, get through to him. Suddenly something he said popped the lid.
"Usewoman," Tema said. "Get ****ed by blacks, every night. All they are, ****s. Jits' whores. Bearing their black brats, yesmaster yesmaster. You said it, they don't know what freedom is. Never will. Can't liberate anyone lets a black **** 'em. they're foul. Dirty, can't get clean. They got black jizz through and through 'em. Jit-jizz!" He spat on the terrace and wiped his mouth."

[monolith94]

Oh, please, Leguin should stick to what she's good at and leave stuff like that to Burroughs.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by monolith94
Oh, please, Leguin should stick to what she's good at and leave stuff like that to Burroughs.

Given that many of Le Guin's recent books have featured slave/master and colonized/colonizer dichotomies (and those relationships go as far back as 'The Word for World is Forest', and 'The Dispossessed') I'd say she's rather good at exploring those themes. I go to Edgar Rice Burroughs for mindless fun- not philosophical or anthropological explorations.

[SKILORD]

Re: What is the most powerfull quote in literature for you?

Originally posted by Vesayen
Aldous Huxley is the greatest author in history, or one of them


What quote from anything you've ever read, was the most powerfull thing you've ever read that appealed to you personally?

For me, its a quote from brave new world-every time I hear it is brings up tremendous emotion:

"But I like inconveniences."

"We don't" said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right, then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

"Not to mention the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be busy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."

There was a long silence

"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.

Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said.

Goood God. That is beautiful. I apologise for my ignorance, but could you name the book?

-

As for me? Well, my mind likes having things arrayed politely for it to view. So the following quote isn't beautiful, only clever. I do not admire Ayn Rand for the beauty of her prose, rather for the brilliance of her philosohy (Though I am not an Objectivist):

"And what is the state but a servant and convienience for a large number of people, just like the electric light and the plumbing system? And wouldn't it be preposterous to claim that men lived for their plumbing and not the plumbing for the men?"

The rest of the book (We the Living) is medicre, with the occasional slump to awful. But that line, while failing to be beautiful, is very, very clever. I appreciate that.

It's not my favorite line in all of literature, I could find better and more inspiring in only a few hours. But it works. If we include works such as the 'Declaration of Independence as Literature (I can't see what discludes it but it seems rather unliterary to me) I would have to say that 'We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal' as my favorite quote. Each time I read it I realise something new, or find new conviction in something old. It is, in fact the basis for my entire personal philosophy.

I'll spare you any more.

[GeneralTacticus]

Re: Re: What is the most powerfull quote in literature for you?

Originally posted by SKILORD


Goood God. That is beautiful. I apologise for my ignorance, but could you name the book?

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, I believe.

[Grandpa Troll]

From the series Taxi...Judd Hirsch confronts Christopher Lloyd upon his return from finally taking time with His Dad...

Judd asks him did he have any soul-searching, life changing questions for Hi Dad...

Christopher Lloyd pauses...states...

"I asked my Dad.....Dad..if they call an ORANGE a Orange

why dont they call a Banana a YELLOW?

At the time in the 70's I was at an IMPASSE with my Dad..so it found its way home....


Peace

Grandpa Troll

[Dr Strangelove]

" Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth
Blessed are they which hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they shall be filled
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God
Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"

[monolith94]

"Given that many of Le Guin's recent books have featured slave/master and colonized/colonizer dichotomies (and those relationships go as far back as 'The Word for World is Forest', and 'The Dispossessed') I'd say she's rather good at exploring those themes. I go to Edgar Rice Burroughs for mindless fun- not philosophical or anthropological explorations."

#1 - I wasn't talking about her use of the subject of slave/master relations - I was talking about her ridiculous use of 'colloqialisms', which give her writing a forced, staged and silly feel. It's like she's trying to emulate pulp fiction, to get hip with the kids.
#2 - If this is a thread about powerful quotes in literature, it should be assumed that any Burroughs mentioned is William S. B., not Edgar Rice B. For, of course, while ERB was known for tarzan and conan, fine works in their own right, WSB is the pioneering writer who has set up an army in his writing against the gods themselves.

[Ecthy]

Moral, das ist wenn man moralisch ist, versteht Er, Woyzeck? Es ist ein gutes Wort.

- Georg Büchner, Woyzeck, 1830-something

(my CG login too )

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by monolith94


#1 - I wasn't talking about her use of the subject of slave/master relations - I was talking about her ridiculous use of 'colloqialisms', which give her writing a forced, staged and silly feel. It's like she's trying to emulate pulp fiction, to get hip with the kids.

I didn't think that was her intention at all- in 'The Dispossessed' she explores the gulf between the well off in society on Urras and the underclass by having Shevek the hero look at a tabloid newspaper- where all the tenses and parts of the sentence are run together any old how, without respect for grammar or time- and the servant assigned to Shevek, when he speaks to him privately, describes the hospitals for his class and his life in a similar mode. Different classes use different vocabularies- and sometimes alter pre existing words- such as the Anglo-Saxon 'ceorl' ending up meaning rude or boorish, as the Modern English, whereas the Norman French 'gentil homme' becomes a gentleman, and the peasant 'villein' ends up a villain.

[Verres]

Originally posted by Verres
"The little sweet doth kill much bitternes" - Keats

Actually, i take that back. its completely untrue

[Sandman]

Good topic. Here's my additions:

SPOILER WARNING

1984 (Practically the whole book is quotable, these are my favourite bits)

'It exists!' he cried.

'No,' said O'Brien.

He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O'Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O'Brien turned away from the wall.

'Ashes,' he said. 'Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.'

'But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it.'

'I do not remember it,' said O'Brien.

1984

Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

[Odin]

The Meek shall inheirit the Earth.

VIVA LA REVOLUCION!!!