#classics

It is untrue that fiction is nonutilitarian. The uses of fiction are synonymous with the uses of literature. They include refreshment, clarification of life, self-awareness, expansion of our range of experiences, and enlargement of our sense of understanding and discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty , and understanding. Like literature generally, fiction is a form of discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty, and understanding. If it is all these things, the question of whether it is a legitimate use of time should not even arise. ↗

— Leland Ryken

#classics #fiction #literature #novels #on-fiction

You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat—coward! ↗

— Homer

#cowardice #death #greece #war #death

…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives. ↗

— Homer

#death #greece #death

But now, as it is, sorrows, unending sorrows must surge within your heart as well—for your own son’s death. Never again will you embrace him stiding home. My spirit rebels—I’ve lost the will to live, to take my stand in the world of men— ↗

— Homer

#death #greece #sorrow #death

And his good wife will tear her cheeks in grief, his sons are orphans and he, soaking the soil red with his own blood, he rots away himself—more birds than women flocking round his body! ↗

— Homer

#death #greece #grief #mourning #death

Pearls' burst out the Snork Maiden excitedly. 'Could ankle rings be made out of pearls?' 'I should think they could,' said Moomintoll. 'Ankle-rings, and nose-rings and ear-rings and engagement rings... ↗

— Tove Jansson

#classics #cute #finnish #funny #moomins

Whoa, son,” said Atticus. “Nobody’s about to make you go anywhere but to bed pretty soon. I’m just going over to tell Miss Rachel you’re here and ask her if you could spend the night with us—you’d like that, wouldn’t you? And for goodness’ sake put some of the county back where it belongs, the soil erosion’s bad enough as it is.” Dill stared at my father’s retreating figure. “He’s tryin‘ to be funny,” I said. “He means take a bath. See there, I told you he wouldn’t bother you. ↗

— Harper Lee

#funny

A great nose may be an index Of a great soul ↗

— Edmond Rostand

#humor #humor

If there really is such a thing as turning in one's grave, Shakespeare must get a lot of exercise. ↗

— George Orwell

#classics #drama #interpretation #shakespeare #art

In the make-up of human beings, intelligence counts for more than our hands, and that is our true strength. ↗

— Ovid

#classics #greek #humans #intelligence #metamorphoses