Some quotes to brighten your day

  

I'm your avarage bookworm who uses sticky notes to mark her favourite lines in a book. (Talking about sticky notes, don't you just hate when you run out of them? Because I do, arggghh. They are quite expensive where I live too... Rant over.)

I collect quotes like I collect books. These two are inseparable, are they not? Today I'll share with you some of my all time favourite quotes that stuck in my head and will probably stay with me always. Here they are:

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The other day I had a silly thought: I imagined what would happen if I turned blind all of a sudden (I noticed that my eyesight is a tiny bit worse than it used to be and the thought followed). When I realised that would mean I'd lose my ability to read I panciked for a moment until I reminded myself it is unlikely to happen. Reading is like breathing for us booklovers, it's hard to imagine living without the stories we dive into each day.

"Somewhere between God and the Devil passion is and the way there is sudden and the way back is worse."

Passion by Jeanette Winterson

If you haven't read this book yet, I highly recommend you to do so. The writing is out of this world and Ms Winterson analyzes the human condition in a very unique way. The quote above has a personal meaning for me these days, therefore I'm very fond of it. (Read my review of The Passion here.)

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Oh, I could rain so many Shakespeare quotes on you... I'm obsessed with his plays. But this one will suffice for now. It rings true, doesn't it?

 "I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell, I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world." 

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

So poetic. I will never get over this book. Did I mention I bawled my eyes out during the last twenty pages? I read it years ago but nothing has compared to it since then.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My dear Gatsby. I've read this book twice; first time I didn't like it, the second time I couldn't shut up about it. That is what a few years do to a reader. Pick it up if you haven't yet, it will stay with you, I promise.

What are some of your favourite quotes? Do you mark your favourite passages in your books? How?

Daniel Deronda - Favourite Quotes

 

As you can see I'm currently reading Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (among other things). I admire this book; truly, I'm obsessed with it. George Eliot's writing style is amazing (this is the first Eliot book I've ever read) and the story is fascinating – I never knew Jews were so frowned upon in Victorian England (too). Also, I might or might not be a little bit in love with Daniel.

I thought I'd share some of my favourite quotes with you. I'm only halfway through the book, so there might be another post coming later with another bunch of quotes. Enjoy!

"Development and catastrophe can often be measured by nothing clumsier than the moment-hand."

"Attempts at description are stupid: who can all at once describe a human being? Even when he is presented to us we only begin that knowledge of his appearance which must be completed by innumerable impressions under differing circumstances. We recognize the alphabet; we are not sure of the language."

"One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything had been said better than we can put it ourselves."

 

"We know that he [Deronda] suffered keenly from the belief that there was a tinge of dishonor in his lot; but there are some cases, and his was one of them, in which the sense of injury breeds

– not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury."

 

"Outsiders might have been more apt to think that Klesmer's position was dangerous for himself if Miss Arrowpoint had been an acknowledged beauty; not taking into account that the most powerful of all beauty is that which reveals itself after sympathy and not before it."

 

"There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms."

 

"I think I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I like."