Sunday, August 26, 2012

Seek ye out of the best books.

Over the course of the summer, I read and read and read. I should have read more, but I got caught up with things like...Downton Abbey. This post is entirely dedicated to the quotes I loved from a few of the great books I read this summer.

"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals." -Sirius Black from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

"Curiosity is not a sin . . . But we should exercise caution with our curiosity." -Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

"Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain." -Persuasion 

"[Y]et there it was not love. It was a little fever of admiration; but it might, probably must, end in love with some." -Persuasion

"The thing about growing up with Fred and George is that you sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve." -Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

"[N]othing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye." -Frankenstein


"I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth." -Frankenstein

"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lower: but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before." -Frankenstein

"Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes, and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable, and cannot withstand you, if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe." -Frankenstein 

"Evil thenceforth became my good." -Frankenstein


"American girls are as clever at concealing their parents, as English women are at concealing their past." -The Picture of Dorian Gray

"She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm." -The Picture of Dorian Gray

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic." -The Picture of Dorian Gray 
"I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below intellect." -The Picture of Dorian Gray


"I can sympathize with everything except suffering . . . I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores, the better." -The Picture of Dorian Gray

"He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time." -The Picture of Dorian Gray

"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." -The Picture of Dorian Gray

"Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious, both are disappointed." -The Picture of Dorian Gray 

"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals." -The Picture of Dorian Gray

"Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his soul, and desire had come to meet it on the way." -The Picture of Dorian Gray 


"To be in love is to surpass one's self." -The Picture of Dorian Gray

"The basis of optimism is sheer terror." -The Picture of Dorian Gray

"The moment she touched actual life, she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away." -The Picture of Dorian Gray

"Each of us has heaven and hell in him . . ." -The Picture of Dorian Gray


"The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young." -The Picture of Dorian Gray

"[L]et us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure." -Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

"Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth." -Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince


"It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more." -Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

"[H]e had not decided to continue along the winding, dangerous path indicated for him by Albus Dumbledore, to accept that he had not been told everything that he wanted to know, but simply to trust. He had no desire to doubt again; he did not want to hear anything that would deflect him from his purpose." -Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows


"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love." -Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 


"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" -Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

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