#literature

But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#love

In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women. If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his hip, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad. In short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford. ↗

— Elizabeth Gaskell

#humor #literature #men #ownership #people

Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent him to Downing College in Cambridge to study under F. R. Leavis. Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students; he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to, or change it. The young Blackadder wrote poems, imagined Dr Leavis’s comments on them, and burned them. ↗

— A.S. Byatt

#craft #literature #poetry #self-confidence #skill

For thy sweet love remembr'd such wealth brings That then, I scorn to change my state with kings. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#romance #shakespeare #change

I felt a wish never to leave that room - a wish that dawn might never come, that my present frame of mind might never change. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#leo-tolstoy #literature #russia #change

All the words he'd stored up had tumbled into the great chasm beneath them ↗

— Carey Jane Clark

#inspirational #inspirational

Lee smiled. "My father said she was a strong woman, and I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is almost indestructible. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#eden #literature #of #steinbeck #strong

The boatman then gently guided the raft across. They saw a dead body floating. At the sight of this, the Master was greatly frightened. But Sun smiled and said, "Master do not be alarmed! That corpse is none other than your own." Zhu Bajie said, "It is you, it is you!" Sha the Monk clapped his hands, and also said, "It is you, it is you!" The boatman also remarked "It was yours, I congratulate you." The three pilgrims congratulated him, and they quietly crossed over the Could Ferry in safety. The Master's shape was changed, and he jumped ashore on the other side with a very light body. ↗

— Wu Cheng'en

#monkey #rebirth #change

She slowly rolled the book over in her hands, memorizing the cover as she said goodbye. She flipped through the pages, feeling the air on her face and breathing in the smell of the paper. ↗

— Sage Steadman

#love

Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun. ↗

— Mignon McLaughlin

#inspirational #young-adult-fiction #inspirational