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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #literature
Esteem him! Like him! Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. Use those words again, and I will leave the room this moment. ↗
#literature #love #marianne-dashwood #quote #sense-sensibility
She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. ↗
Había leído lo bastante como para apreciar mi ingenio literario, pero no lo bastante como para identificar mis fuentes de conocimiento. Me encantan las mujeres así. Podía decirle cosas como: "La principal diferencia entre la felicidad y la alegría es que la felicidad es sólida, mientras que la alegría es líquida" y, escudándome en su ignorancia de Salinger, sentirme ingenioso, seductor y, porqué no decirlo, joven. Notaba que Ernie me miraba fijamente mientras yo me daba pisto, pero qué diablos, pensaba yo. Un hombre tiene derecho a flirtear. ↗
#español #flirting #literatura #literature #literature-quotes
In this modern world where activity is stressed almost to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked. Yet a child's need for quietness is the same today as it has always been--it may even be greater--for quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own. ↗
Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination. ↗
#j-g-ballard #literature #science-fiction #writing #imagination
When it begins it is like a light in a tunnel, a rush of steel and steam across a torn up life. It is a low rumble, an earthquake in the back of the mind. My spine is a track with cold black steel racing on it, a trail of steam and dust following behind, ghost like. It feels like my whole life is holding its breath. By the time she leaves the room I am surprised that she can’t see the train. It has jumped the track of my spine and landed in my mothers’ living room. A cold dark thing, black steel and redwood paneling. It is the old type, from the western movies I loved as a kid. He throws open the doors to the outside world, to the dark ocean. I feel a breeze tugging at me, a slender finger of wind that catches at my shirt. Pulling. Grabbing. I can feel the panic build in me, the need to scream or cry rising in my throat. And then I am out the door, running, tumbling down the steps falling out into the darkened world, falling out into the lifeless ocean. Out into the blackness. Out among the stars and shadows. And underneath my skin, in the back of my head and down the back of my spine I can feel the desperation and I can feel the noise. I can feel the deep and ancient ache of loudness that litters across my bones. It’s like an old lover, comfortable and well known, but unwelcome and inappropriate with her stories of our frolicking. And then she’s gone and the Conductor is closing the door. The darkness swells around us, enveloping us in a cocoon, pressing flat against the train like a storm. I wonder, what is this place? Those had been heady days, full and intense. It’s funny. I remember the problems, the confusions and the fears of life we all dealt with. But, that all seems to fade. It all seems to be replaced by images of the days when it was all just okay. We all had plans back then, patterns in which we expected the world to fit, how it was to be deciphered. Eventually you just can’t carry yourself any longer, can’t keep your eyelids open, and can’t focus on anything but the flickering light of the stars. Hours pass, at first slowly like a river and then all in a rush, a climax and I am home in the dorm, waking up to the ringing of the telephone. When she is gone the apartment is silent, empty, almost like a person sleeping, waiting to wake up. When she is gone, and I am alone, I curl up on the bed, wait for the house to eject me from its dying corpse. Crazy thoughts cross through my head, like slants of light in an attic. The Boston 395 rocks a bit, a creaking noise spilling in from the undercarriage. I have decided that whatever this place is, all these noises, sensations - all the train-ness of this place - is a fabrication. It lulls you into a sense of security, allows you to feel as if it’s a familiar place. But whatever it is, it’s not a train, or at least not just a train. The air, heightened, tense against the glass. I can hear the squeak of shoes on linoleum, I can hear the soft rattle of a dying man’s breathing. Men in white uniforms, sharp pressed lines, run past, rolling gurneys down florescent hallways. ↗
He speaks in that strange sports talk, telling me about the start of the new season and asks if I follow baseball. No. I really don’t. He assures me if I stay in town long enough I will become a baseball fan. It’s a requirement of living in St. Louis. Everyone is a Cardinal’s fan. “Loyal,” he tells me. St. Louis is a loyal town. ↗
#cardinals #contemporary #gothic #historical-fiction #missouri
She wore a loose-fitting purple velvet Pre-Raphaelite gown, and her abundant dark-brown hair flowed down her back and shoulders to her waist. As she drew near, I noticed her warm brown eyes peeping at me beneath lush, un-plucked brows, her smiling red lips and smooth, un-powdered cheeks almost begging for kisses. She possessed a beauty much different from Daisy, more like a wildflower in the unspoiled earth than a prize-winning rose in a formal garden. However, her Pre-Raphaelite fashion might have been an affectation of a different kind, a bit closer to nature but a stylish imitation just the same. ↗
