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December 15, 2014

10 Great Lines from 10 Great Books.

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Kurt Vonnegut be kind only rule

(Who’s counting)

May this inspire lots of cozy reading in sunshine or lamplight, in hot tubs or bath tubs, in couches or beds, beneath blankets or the arms of a loved one.

 

“He often felt his life was a dream and he wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” ~ Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

 

“Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.” ~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

business quote petit prince ship "Antoine de Saint-Exupery"

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. ~ Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.” ~ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger. I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” ~ The Savage, Brave New World

 

The foreward to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe reads:

“Dear Lucy, I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result, you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” ~ C.S. Lewis

“Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They’re always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.” ~  J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

 

“Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.”
~ Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

And:

“‘Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies –: God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater

 

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” ~ Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed.”  ~ The Little Prince

 

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” ~ Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

“I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.” ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

 

“The only thing for us to decide is what to do with the time we are given” ~ Gandalf, Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

 

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