Literature and Poetry

#52
#52
“Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unkown thing?”

-Victor Hugo
 
#53
#53
“If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. But the guilty one is not only he who commits the sin, but also he who causes the darkness.”

-Hugo
 
#54
#54
“Succeed; that is the advice which falls drop by drop, from the overhanging corruption of men. Success is a hideous thing. Its counterfeit of merit deceives these men. To the mass, success has almost the same appearance as supremacy. Success... that pretender to talent, has a dupe... —history. Contemporary admiration is nothing but shortsightedness. When something is truly great and capable of standing the test of time, it needs no validation nor pride to assuage its own vanity.”
 
#56
#56
“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die to appreciate the enjoyments of life.

Live then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until God will deign to reveal the future to all man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, Wait and Hope.”

- Alexandre Dumas
 
#57
#57
“It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.”
 
#59
#59
“As a general rule, people ask for advice only in order not to follow it; or if they do follow it, in order to have someone to blame for giving it.”
 
#60
#60
“When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.”
 
#61
#61
“I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than a sword or a pistol.”
 
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#64
#64
Charlie Kelly said:
“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die to appreciate the enjoyments of life.

Live then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until God will deign to reveal the future to all man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, Wait and Hope.”

- Alexandre Dumas
Click to expand...

Charlie Kelly said:
“It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.”
Click to expand...


Just to pick a nit for no good reason... the second is just a clip of the first, but from a different translation, right?
 
#65
#65
It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

Faster, faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.

-Hunter S Thompson.
 
#66
#66
pismonque said:
Just to pick a nit for no good reason... the second is just a clip of the first, but from a different translation, right?
Click to expand...

Actually I think those are two different lines from the same book. Never really caught it myself before but he does reuse it a bit. It’s basically saying the same thing. Nice catch.
 
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#67
#67
Even the damned in hell have the community of their suffering.

- Suttree by Cormac McCarthy



Thought that was particularly fitting for VN these days (even more so since it's from a novel that takes place in Knoxville).
 
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#68
#68
And since I brought up Suttree, a few more favorites from that book:


"What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This mawky wormbent tabernacle."


"How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it."


"Somewhere in the gray wood by the river is the huntsman and in the brooming corn and in the castellated press of cities. His work lies all wheres and his hounds tire not. I have seen them in a dream, slaverous and wild and their eyes crazed with ravening for souls in this world. Fly them."
 
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#69
#69
And finally one of my most quoted McCarthy lines, from Blood Meridian:


There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto.
 
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#70
#70
In this thread, there is no greater depth of poo,
Than that of what even Lawgator can spew.

Barknoxbrawler original......
 
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#71
#71
You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.

- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
 
#73
#73
I opened this thread
To see what was written
The words were amazing
And I have been smitten

The depth and the rhyming
Just spoke to my soul
To find another thread this awesome
Oh, where would I go

But I recall another place
Where the words are so wise
That every word that is uttered
Will put a sparkle in your eyes

It's out in the badlands
Where the outcast are thrown
Where the rejects they gather
It's called the end zone

There's a legend called Joe
Who can light up the room
And when you hear all his wisdom
It will make you go Boom!
 
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