You’re on your own little quest, an there’s a bit of Frodo Baggins in you, and a bit of Verne’s Paganel, and just a tiny drop of Robinson Cursoe, and a smidgeon of Radishchev.

While art thrives on the blazing colours of scandal, literature blossoms on the dark soil of tragedy.

Come then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in...

Trouble me no more about her. Hereafter she is only my sister in name: not because I disown her, but because she has disowned me.

All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.

There is remedy for all things except death – Don Quixote De La Mancha

In any case how many took the oath and are now licking the toes of the whiteman?No, you take an oath to confirm a choice already made. The decision to lay or not lay your...

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.

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

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...

Dismissing fantasy writing because some of it is bad is exactly like saying I’m not reading Jane Eyre because it is a romance and I know romance is crap.

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,...

What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian’s. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when...

They always looked back before turning the corner, for their mother was always at the window to nod and smile, and wave her hand to them. Somehow it seemed as if they couldn’t have got...

Ništa je umreti – strašno je ne živeti.

Só o teu amor é o inimigo. Ti es ti, aínda que sexas un Montesco. ,Que é un Montesco? Non é man, nin pé, nin brazo, nin cara, nin parte ningunha do corpo. ¡Cambia o...

I gather,” he added, “that you’ve never had much time to study the classics?””That is so.””Pity. Pity. You’ve missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the classics, if I had my way.”Poirot shrugged...

The classics can console. But not enough.

Of course he chanted with the rest: it was impossible to dootherwise. To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, todo what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction.

Unasked, Unsought, Love gives itself but is not bought

Enjoy the tiny unexplainable second. You can learn whatever you want.

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

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

«Fernand! – gridò Montecristo, – dei miei cento nomi non avrei bisogno di dirtene che uno solo per fulminarti; ma questo nome tu lo indovini, non è vero? o piuttosto te lo ricordi? perché malgrado...

Upon the publication of Goethe’s epic drama, the Faustian legend had reached an almost unapproachable zenith. Although many failed to appreciate, or indeed, to understand this magnum opus in its entirety, from this point onward...

You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?

…but both their minds tending to the same point—one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed—they contrived in the end to reach it.

You may only call me “Mrs. Darcy”… when you are completely, and perfectly, and incandescently happy.

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

Nada mudou. Afastada das sombras irreais da noite, ressurge a vida, na sua realidade já conhecida. Devemos retomá-la onde a deixamos e apodera-se de nós o terrível sentimento de continuidade necessária da energia no mesmo...

It has been claimed that Plato was an egalitarian; it has been claimed that he was a totalitarian. It has been claimed that he was the utopian, proposing a universal blueprint for the ideal state;...

Think of this- that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.

I am no bird, no net ensnares me.

I saw the Cloud, though I did not foresee the Storm.

Miss Mayella” in her life; probably not, as she took offense to routine courtesy. What on earth was her life like? I soon found out.

They too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape; they’d had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not...

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing...

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

In order to witness clearly the march of humanity from its inception to the present moment, an understanding of how humankind has held encounter with the divine as central is crucial. Ancient humanity provides us...

Poirot, watching him, felt suddenly a doubt–an uncomfortable twinge. Was there, here, something that he had missed? Some richness of the spirit? Sadness crept over him. Yes, he should have become acquainted with the classics....

The Doctrine is the Ecstasy

Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be...

A great nose may be an indexOf a great soul

Time is going really faster than you think. That second just passed now, get up, pack the bag, get lost…

When I say to the Moment flying;’Linger a while — thou art so fair!’Then bind me in thy bonds undying,And my final ruin I will bear!

I have seen or heard of no other man whom destiny treated with such enmity as it did Philoktetes

Mercedes vive, signore, e Mercedes ricorda, perché solo lei vi ha riconosciuto quando vi ha visto, e prima ancora di vedervi vi ha riconosciuto dalla voce, Edmond, dal semplice suono della vostra voce; e da...

Perhaps anything that he did would have pleased Lucy, but his awkwardness went straight to her heart.

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!

The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident...