Quotations from Literature

What is literature?

There is another page on this website, in the People section, entitled Quotations. This covers mostly (but not exclusively) things that people have said, rather than things they've written (which are mostly here).

But there is a grey area, involving things that people have written but which express their personal opinions or philosophy. These are generally on the other page; this page is mainly about quotations from fictional works (including plays).

I have however included some political or philosophical quotations on this page, where I think the title of the document might make the subject of a question – for example, here and here – and indeed here.

See also Poems (for quotations from poems).

Opening lines

Quotation			Author		Title
Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents			Louisa May Alcott		Little Women
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.			Jane Austen		Pride and Prejudice
"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!"
The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex.					Sense and Sensibility
It was the day my grandmother exploded.			Iain Banks		The Crow Road
All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up ...			J. M. Barrie		Peter Pan
Nothing to be done (play)			Samuel Beckett		Waiting for Godot
The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.			Peter Benchley		Jaws
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.			Charlotte Brontë		Jane Eyre
I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to. (Travel book)			Bill Bryson		Notes from a Big Country
Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I can't be sure.			Albert Camus		The Outsider / Stranger
Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought [the title character], "without pictures or conversations?"			Lewis Carroll		Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The drought had lasted for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.			Arthur C. Clarke		2001: A Space Odyssey
These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr. Bucket. (Opening sentence of)			Roald Dahl		Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York			Daniel Defoe		Robinson Crusoe
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.			Daphne du Maurier		Rebecca
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.			L. P. Hartley		The Go–Between
"I will not ... drink more than 14 alcohol units a week" is the first on a list of New Year's resolutions that opens			Helen Fielding		Bridget Jones's Diary
"9st 3 (but post–Christmas)" is the first dated entry in
A squat grey building of only thirty four storeys. Over the main entrance the words, Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre ...			Aldous Huxley		Brave New World
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.			Franz Kafka		Metamorphosis
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.			D. H. Lawrence		Lady Chatterley's Lover
Call me Ishmael.			Herman Melville		Moby Dick
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.			George Orwell		Nineteen Eighty–Four
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.			Sylvia Plath		The Bell Jar
I was born in the city of Bombay ... once upon a time. No, that won't do ...			Salman Rushdie		Midnight's Children
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.			Dodie Smith		I Capture the Castle
To begin at the beginning, it is spring, a moonless night in the small town, starless and bible black (spoken by the narrator)			Dylan Thomas		Under Milk Wood
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.			Leo Tolstoy		Anna Karenina
When in the course of human events ...			(Various)		American Declaration of Independence
Arma virumque cano (Arms and the man I sing)			Virgil		The Aeneid
"You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy"			Alice Walker		The Color Purple
No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own.			H. G. Wells		War of the Worlds

Closing lines

Quotation			Author		Title
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.			F. Scott FitzGerald		The Great Gatsby
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to gain. Working men of all countries, unite!			Karl Marx		The Communist Manifesto
			Friedrich Engels
John Thomas says good–night to Lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a hopeful heart			D. H. Lawrence		Lady Chatterley's Lover
Il faut cultiver notre jardin (We must cultivate our garden)			Voltaire		Candide

Other

Quotation			Author		Title
When I am dead, I hope it may be said / 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read'			Hilaire Belloc		On His Books
Reader, I married him. (Opening sentence of Chapter XXXVIII, 'Conclusion'; "I" refers to the title character)			Charlotte Brontë		Jane Eyre
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results (often misattributed to Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, etc. This is the first known use)			Rita Mae Brown		Sudden Death (1984 novel)
al freír de los huevos lo verá ‎("you will see it when you fry the eggs")			Miguel de Cervantes		Don Quixote
Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the number by which the dead outnumber the living			Arthur C. Clarke		2001: A Space Odyssey
Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast / To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak			William Congreve		The Mourning Bride
Very flat, Norfolk (play)			Noel Coward		Private Lives
No man is an island, entire of itself			John Donne		Meditations, No. XVII
Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee
... it was the universal Opinion of all Mr. Allworthy's Family, that he was certainly born to be hanged (said, by the narrator, of the eponymous character)			Henry Fielding		Tom Jones
To his right were two stately gates of iron fantastically wrought, supported by stone pillars on whose summit stood griffins of black marble embracing coats of arms and banners inscribed with the device 'Per Ardua ad Astra' (origin of the RAF motto)			H. Ryder Haggard		The People of the Mist
… She–who–must–be–obeyed … (translation of the name by which a mysterious white queen is known to a tribe of African natives – quoted by John Mortimer in Rumpole's 'pet' name for his wife)			H. Ryder Haggard		She
He would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to			Joseph Heller		Catch–22
Some men are born mediocre; some men achieve mediocrity; and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them
Two souls with but a single thought; two hearts that beat as one			Friedrich Halm		Ingomar the Barbarian (Son of the Wild)
The great masses of the people … will more easily fall victim to a great lie than to a small one.			Adolf Hitler		Mein Kampf
[the life of man, in a state of war, is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short			John Hobbes		Leviathan
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (It is sweet and honourable to die for one's country – quoted by Wilfred Owen in the title of one of his best–known poems)			Horace		Odes (III.2.13)
I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.			Jerome K. Jerome		Three Men in a Boat
Three quarks for Muster Mark! / Sure he has not got much of a bark / And sure any he has it's all beside the mark			James Joyce		Finnegans Wake
Man proposes, but God disposes			Thomas à Kempis		On the Imitation of Christ
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?			Christopher Marlowe		Doctor Faustus
A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of Communism			Karl Marx		The Communist Manifesto
			Friedrich Engels
Money couldn't buy friends but you got a better class of enemy.			Spike Milligan		Puckoon
All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.			George Orwell		Animal Farm
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Slogans from			George Orwell		1984
Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains. (Opening words)			Jean–Jacques Rousseau		The Social Contract (1762)
The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went.			Saki (H. H. Munro)		Reginald on Besetting Sins (1904 short story)
Hell is other people.			Jean–Paul Sartre		No Exit (1944 play)
Walk? Not bloody likely. I'm going in a taxi (1914 play)			George Bernard Shaw		Pygmalion
To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers			Adam Smith		The Wealth of Nations
I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders. All my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl of impressionable age, and she is mine for life (spoken by the eponymous character)			Muriel Spark		The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive (1878 essay)			Robert Louis Stevenson		El Dorado
Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles (All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds)			Voltaire		Candide
Dans ce pays–ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres (In this country it is good to shoot an admiral from time to time to encourage the others)
Cela est bien dit ... mais il faut cultiver notre jardin (That is well said ... but let us cultivate our garden)
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance			Oscar Wilde		An Ideal Husband
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune … to lose both seems like carelessness			Oscar Wilde		The Importance of Being Earnest
I can resist everything except temptation			Oscar Wilde		Lady Windermere's Fan
[A cynic is] a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are either well–written or badly–written. That is all. (from the Preface)			Oscar Wilde		The Picture of Dorian Gray
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

© Haydn Thompson 2017–23