what the title says.
there are sooo many for me but one of my favorite quotes ever is from a clockwork orange by anthony burgess:
“Oh it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk round my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers.”
“They were always reminding themselves to stop measuring life in coffee spoons, mornings and afternoons, to keep swimming way, way down to the bottom of the ocean to find where the mermaids sang, each to each. Where there was danger and beauty and light. Only the now, Ashley said it was the only way to live.”
From ‘Night Film’ by Marisha Pessl.
“That’s the duty of the old,’ said the Librarian, ‘to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.’
They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
The stars, like dust, encircle me
In living mists of light;
And all of space I seem to see
In one vast burst of sight
Isaac Asimov
“No insect hangs it’s nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human dignity.”
Edith Wharton The House of Mirth
(I was absolutely wowed with her prose in this book.)