I wish to deal only with the masterpieces which the consensus of opinion for a long time has accepted as supreme. We are all supposed to have read them; it is a pity that so few of us have.

I am not what I am..

I read a lot. I always have, but in those two years I gorged myself on books with a voluptuous, almost erotic gluttony. I would go to the local library and take out as many as I could, and then lock myself in the bedsit and read solidly for a week. I went for old...

Such a women as you a hundred men always convet – your eyes will bewitch scores on scores into an unvailing fancy for you – you can only marry one of that many…The rest may try to get over their passion with more or less success. But all of these men will be saddened. And...

I have a Greek-American friend who named her daughter “Nike” and is often asked why she chose to name her offspring after a sneaker.

There is no life here but the slow death of days, and so when the evil falls on the town, its coming seems almost preordained, sweet and morphic. It is almost as though the town knows the evil was coming and the shape it would take.

Time, which sees all things, has found you out.

Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.

Vero o falso che sia, quel che si dice degli uomini occupa spesso altrettanto posto nella loro vita, e soprattutto nel loro destino, quanto quello che fanno.

Il volgo è un vecchio Narciso che adora se stesso e applaude il volgare.

This is fan fiction, but it’s the fan fiction of a classical scholar who knows his stuff, even if he is a touch irreverent and unorthodox.

He granted its due share to everything equally, drawing from everything only what was beautiful in it, and in the end left himself only the divine Raphael as a teacher. So a great poetic artist, having read many different writings filled with much delight and majestic beauty, in the end might leave himself, as his...

Werd ich zum Augenblicke sagen:Verweile doch! du bist so schön!Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen,Dann will ich gern zugrunde gehn!

By reading older books we get a taste of the conversation of Heaven.

I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy.

nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose

Contudo, o mais corajoso dentre nós tem medo de si mesmo. A mutilação do selvagem tem a sua trágica sobrevivência na própria renúncia que corrompe as nossas vidas. Somos todos castigados por nossas renúncias. Cada impulso que tentamos aniquilar germina em nossa mente e nos envenena. Pecando, o corpo se liberta de seu pecado, porque...

Jonah-John-if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still-not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places, at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second,...

Well, Betsy,” he said, “your mother tells me that you are going to use Uncle Keith’s trunk for a desk. That’s fine. You need a desk. I’ve often noticed how much you like to write. The way you eat up those advertising tablets from the store! I never saw anything like it. I can’t understand...

Betsy was so full of joy that she had to be alone. She went upstairs to her bedroom and sat down on Uncle Keith’s trunk. Behind Tacy’s house the sun had set. A wind had sprung up and the trees, their color dimmed, moved under a brooding sky. All the stories she had told Tacy...

All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.

The last thing he ever said to me was, ‘Just always be waiting for me, and then some night you will hear me crowing.

No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew...

Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness—she with those delicate feet of hers, never touching the earth, gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. She entangles one man, now another.

The Doctrine is the Ecstasy

I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter.

Ask not the elves for advice, because they will tell you both ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

…and they limp and halt, they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side, can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty, trudging after Ruin, maddening, blinding Ruin. But Ruin is strong and swift—She outstrips them all by far, stealing a march, leaping over the whole wide earth to bring mankind to...

Ut haec ipsa qui non sentiat deorum vim habere is nihil omnino sensurus esse videatur.”If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all.

É clássico aquilo que persiste como rumor mesmo onde predomina a atualidade mais incompatível.

La città di Leonia rifà se stessa tutti i giorni: ogni mattina la popolazione si risveglia tra lenzuola fresche, si lava con saponette appena sgusciate dall’involucro, indossa vestaglie nuove fiammanti, estrae dal più perfezionato frigorifero barattoli di latta ancora intonsi, ascoltando le ultime filastrocche che dall’ultimo modello d’apparecchio. Sui marciapiedi, avviluppati in tersi sacchi di...

I could read the great books but the great books don’t interest me.

The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.

The man seemed not to have heard him. ‘At this life-giving time of the year, Professor Scrooge,’ said the pastor, clicking his pen, ‘it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight contribution to babes and adults, who lie languishing in hospitals and care facilities, standing on street corners and under bridges,...

Every new book we read in our brief and busy lives means that a classic is left unread.

Nobody could catch cold by the sea; nobody wanted appetite by the sea; nobody wanted spirits; nobody wanted strength. Sea air was healing, softening, relaxing — fortifying and bracing — seemingly just as was wanted — sometimes one, sometimes the other. If the sea breeze failed, the seabath was the certain corrective; and where bathing...

it’s not about what to think,it’s about how to think.

Let them Teach,Let them learn,let them pray,for the world is theirs.

When extremists come together extreme things happen.

Express yourself, Express your life, Express the Moment, Live the life.

What happened to the classics?” you may ask. “Don’t you believe in reading great literature to children?”Nothing happened to the classics-but something happened to children: their imaginations went to sleep in front of the television set twenty-five years ago. Reading a classic to a child whose imagination is in a state of retarded development will...

Hazel blue anemone in a little SeaSide cave…drawing currents from the sea turquoise blue on sparkling waves. In ocean dreams, the poet waits by his grotto, passing days. Rhyming verse, his mind creates where his smiling Sea Nymph plays. The lapping seas of emerald green stir the poet’s fantasy neath crystal skies aquamarine and cotton...

I love the quietude of misty dawn before the sober sun is up… The morning songs of birds awakening in blooming garden sets my soul gently… Aroma flowers with glistering of the dew… Deep full chest breath… Shy sunbeams flickering over the tops of wisdom whispering choir of waving trees… Serenity of mind… The crystal...

I’m not Meg tonight, I’m a ‘doll’.

Thus I did with Susan as with most other things in my earlier days, dipping her image into my mind and coloring it of a thousand fantastic hues, before I could see her as she really was.

Kalbim içimde konuşurken ben susmayı beceremem.

I’ve heard that lawyers’ children, on seeing their parents in court in the heat of argument, get the wrong idea: they think opposing counsel to be the personal enemies of their parents, they suffer agonies, and are surprised to see them often go out arm-in-arm with their tormenters during the first recess. This was not...

No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards.” – Atticus Finch

Classics aren’t books that are read for pleasure. Classics are books that are imposed on unwilling students, books that are subjected to analyses of “levels of significance” and other blatt, books that are dead.

A new book is still on trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. If you join at 11...