Favorite Literary Quotes

I've been collecting literary quotes for as long as I can remember. It's kind of my jam. I thought I'd share some with you and hope that you'll do the same! Spread the words love.

A sample of my collection:

"It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand." - The Velveteen Rabbit

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust." - The Wasteland

"If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon." - Peter Pan

"To be a saint is the exception; to be upright is the rule. Err, falter, sin, but be upright. To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. Sin is a gravitation." - Les Miserables

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." - The Importance of Being Earnest

"In vain he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts." - It
"After denuding the trunk, the men left to denude others, and for a time the tree stood blighted, trying to raise its stunted arms, a creature clubbed mute, only its sudden voicelessness making us realize it had been speaking all along." - Virgin Suicides

"There is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it." - Thief of Time

"Some people feel like they don’t deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past." - Into the Wild


Sometimes you cannot believe what you see. You have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you you must feel that you can trust them, too, even when you’re in the dark." - Tuesdays with Morrie

“So, I looked up, and we were in this giant dome like a glass snowball, and Mark said that the amazing white stars were really only holes in the black glass of the dome, and when you went to heaven, the glass broke away, and there was nothing but a whole sheet of star white, which is brighter than anything but doesn’t hurt your eyes. It was vast and open and thinly quiet, and I felt so small.” - The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"When widows exclaim loudly against second marriages, I would always lay a wager that the man, if not the wedding-day, is absolutely fixed on."

Amelia by Henry Fielding

"What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!"
"Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity."

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
(Frodo and Gandalf discussing the fate of the betrayer Gollum, Chapter 'The Shadow of the Past'.)

Some random ones. I have so maaaany.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor

The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle

The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Omg The Last Unicorn, Lord of the Rings, Oscar Wilde, and Peter Pan! <3 Other great books were mentioned too =)

"His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom."

"I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil."

Both from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I would've put C.S Lewis quotes from like Narnia or The Space Trilogy but that'd take up so much space

I'm going to Jane Eyre it up a little bit in here because I can't resist.

"I would always rather be happy than dignified."

"I am no bird, and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent will which I will now exert to leave you."

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustainted I am, the more I will respect myself.”

“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”

and....

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”

And done.

"You're a Wizard, Harry."

Nothing more after that seemed to impact me more than that one line. In just those few words the entire HP series seemed to balance itself.

-Ray Bradbury The Fog Horn

-Ray Bradbury The Fog Horn

-Ray Bradbury The Fog Horn

And this isn't in one of his books but I like it anyway:

[I love this because: First of all Aragorn. Second of all, it took me forever to understand it when I first read it, but now that I have...]

[Come on, its epic.]

[Bartimaeus is one of the FUNNIEST characters on earth. This is just a glimpse.]

[This is pretty much the soul of Tigana, and Tigana is a VERY soulful book.]

[This is THE epic moment of this book.]

[This is adorable, which is all I'll say.]

[It makes me dream, and hope, and want to live.]

[I believe in this SO much. And it was so relevant in the book.]-- Steven Brust (Taltos)

[I love the whole world - this is a saying in that world.]

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” -- H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature

“From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.”-- H.P. Lovecraft

“There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we learn and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life. But some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests; and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy."-- H.P. Lovecraft

“Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.” -- H.P. Lovecraft

“I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men. -- H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider

“The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. ”-- H.P. Lovecraft

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” -- H.P. Lovecraft

"I heard one cry in the night, and I heard one laugh afterwards. If I cannot forget that, I shall not be able to sleep again."-- M.R. James, Count Magnus

“A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders.”-- Lord Dunsany

Just to name a few. :V

I have much too many to count. It doesn't help that I love almost everything I am able to read front ot back. I have tons of quotes I love. The list just grows and grows.

"For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach." - J.R.R. Tolkien, Return of the King

"Stand tall, smile bright, and let 'em wonder what secret's making you laugh." - Dan Brown, Angels & Demons

"Our belief is often strongest when it should be weakest. That is the nature of hope." - Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

"This is how we go on: one day at a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time." - Stephen King, Bag of Bones

"People are too complicated to have simple labels." - Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

I could list so many more....

"And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in lakes." - C.S Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

"The love of knowledge is a kind of madness." - C.S Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

"You had nothing to say about it and yet made nothing up into words." C.S Lewis, Perelandra

"The beasts would not think it hard if I told them to walk on their heads. It would become their delight to walk on their heads. I am His beasts, and all His biddings are joys." - C.S Lewis, Perelandra

"The part of the philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man who would so his neighbour good must first study how not to do him evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye." - George MacDonald, Lilith

"A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, ever an atom freer." - George MacDonald, Lilith

"Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool out of you that you will know yourself for one, and begin to be wise." - George MacDonald, Lilith

"Books are but dead bodies to you, and a library nothing but a catacomb!" - George MacDonald, Lilith

"I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-word of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense." - Beatrix Potter, One of Her Amazing Books Which I Forget the Name of

There was more but I couldn't add them all lest I create a 'novel of a response'

Well, I know what thread I'll spend the next two days following.

“Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically--to those who hardly think about us in return.” - T.H. White, The Once and Future King.

“The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.” - T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“If people reach perfection they vanish, you know.” - T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“I can imagine nothing more terrifying than an Eternity filled with men who were all the same. The only thing which has made life bearable…has been the diversity of creatures on the surface of the globe.” - T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“You could not give up a human heart as you could give up drinking. The drink was yours, and you could give it up: but your lover’s soul was not your own: it was not at your disposal; you had a duty towards it.” - T.H. White, The Once and Future King

"As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy." - Joseph Heller, Catch-22

"Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been demoted because he no longer gave a damn whether he missed or not. He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive." - Joseph Heller, Catch-22

"Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing." - Joseph Heller, Catch-22

"I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by and by into our lives." - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.” - Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man

"Can't you recognize the human in the inhuman?" - Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man

I have found that a lot of people believe that their preferences in any number of things (games, television shows, movies, novels, what have you) are better than other people's opinions and that contrary opinions often renders other people's preferences as unimportant or even silly. However, the smug superiority of the self-righteous bastards who think that their choice in music exceeds everyone else's drives me bonkers. Which is why I love this quote from Tad Williams's novel, The War of the Flowers, with every fiber of my being:

There's so many literary quotes (from non-classics and classics) that I would put but it would become an endless list, so here's a few:

Shakespeare's Macbeth:

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”

My favourite Shakespeare play; it's so dark and over-dramatic.

Ian McEwan's Atonement:

“It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”

“Was everyone else really as alive as she was?...If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was.”

Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore:

“Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.”

Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Eagle:

“You cannot expect the man who made this shield to live easily under the rule of man who worked the sheath of this dagger . . . You are the builders of coursed stone walls, the makers of straight roads and ordered justice and disciplined troops. We know that, we know it all too well. We know that your justice is more sure than ours, and when we rise against you, we see our hosts break against the discipline of your troops, as the sea breaks against a rock. And we do not understand, because all these things are the ordered pattern, and only the free curves of the shield-boss are real to us. We do not understand. And when the time comes that we begin to understand your world, too often we lose the understanding of our own.”

To give some context, it is the part where Esca is describing how his people in Britannia were losing their culture thanks to the Romans. I really like this quote when applied to culture in general.

I have a few all time favorite quotes but two, both bye the same person has really made helped me move on in life.

[It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. [/quote]. My grandmother died in 2002 and it was her constant nagging that got me to read the first Harry
Potter book. I had trouble getting the concept of phonetics having been in a private school for two years that taught sigh reading. By the time of he death I had been able to read all the avalible books. And when she died, after a 6 year battle with cancer, we were all deviated, but when ever I think of her I think
Of that quote and how she would want me to dwell on the past but strive
For the future.

In 2011, a good friend of mine passed away at the age of 18 due to unknown causes. One minute he was getting ready for school, the next he clasped and died. The entire school mourned his death as he was kind to everyone, a genius is acting, singing and writing, he was a free spirit and at graduation, we all wore badges in his honor with that quote, as we know he is in heaven, talking to
Shakespeare and Mozart.

Miss you so much Sean. RIP and send me some dimes from heaven

"Not all who wander are lost." - Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

"Without suffering there would be no compassion." - A Walk to Remember, Nicholas Sparks

- Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

- Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

- Stephen King, 11/22/63

- Stephen King, 11/22/63

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings

"How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks."
Peter Wimsey, Gaudy Night

"...by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her!"
Benedick, Much Ado About Nothing, Act 2 Scene 3

"My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations."
Augustus Waters, The Fault In Our Stars