So anyway, I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a nerd. I was reminded of that fact yesterday when I had my last transatlantic literary history class, and I was sad. Yes, I was sad. It's kind of ironic, because this class had given me more stress than any other class I have taken thus far. But it was definitely worth the pain, and I feel like a much more legitimate English major. In honor of the wonderful learning experience this class has been, I'm going to share a few of my favorite quotes:
"When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it." Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
"Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science." William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home..."
William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality
"Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!"
Percy Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
"There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colors gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot."
Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott
"When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink."
"Jack: I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister. Algernon: Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first."
"Then a passionate celibacy is all that any of us can look forward to."
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
"And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a women... she was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent... her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow.... Suddenly she opened her bare arms and threw them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncontrollable desire to touch the sky, and at the same time the swift shadows darted out on the earth, swept around on the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy embrace. A formidable silence hung over the scene."
Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness
"We must have you married before you are educated beyond eligibility." Tom Stoppard, Arcadia
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation." Henry David Thoreau, Walden
"And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose." Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
"I would prefer not to." Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener
"This world is not conclusion...
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul"
Emily Dickinson
"One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."
Robert Frost, Birches
"I was of three minds
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds
...
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
are one. "
Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
"Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human interaction." Flannery O'Conner, Good Country People
"Dying
is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
...
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
and I eat men like air."
Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus
okay, I apologize for the comprehensive list of quotes that might be interesting to only... me :) if you made it this far and are still reading, congratulations! Please tip your waiter on the way out.
