Yevgeny Zamyatin

We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

“You see, even in our thoughts, no one is ever ‘one,’ but always ‘one of.’” (Pg 8)

“The microspeed of the tongue ought to be always slightly less than the microspeed of the thoughts and certainly not ever the reverse.” (Pg 9)

“I am not capable of joking – every joke, by function of its omissions, contains a lie.” (Pg 14)

“Aren’t human beings constructed as haphazardly as these ridiculous “apartments”? Human heads aren’t transparent, and their only tiny windows: the eyes.” (Pg 26)

“Clearly, to be original means to somehow stand out from others. Consequently, being original is to violate equality…” (Pg 27)

“Freedom and crime are so indissolubly connected.” (Pg 33)

“To destroy the few quickly is more reasonable than to give the many an opportunity to ruin themselves.” (Pg 49)

“All of life in its complexity and beauty is forever minted in the gold of words.” (Pg 61)

“That means you love it. You’re afraid of it – because it is stronger than you. You hate it – because you are afraid of it. You love it – because you can’t conquer it yourself. You see, you can only love the unconquerable.” (Pg 64)

“How awful for you! By the looks of it, you’ve developed a soul.” (Pg 79)

“Mankind ceased to be wild beast when it built its first wall.” (Pg 83)

“Mathematics and death: neither makes mistakes.” (Pg 90)

“I can see that you need someone to take you by the hand and walk you through life.” (Pg 93)

“Everything that is great is simple.” (Pg 102)

“Human history goes up in circles, like an aero. The circles are different – some golden, some bloody – but they are all divided into 360 degrees. They start at zero and progress to 10, 20, 200, 360 degrees, and return to zero again.” (Pg 103)

“The only things that are aware of themselves and conscious of their individuality are irritated eyes, cut fingers, sore teeth. A healthy eye, finger, tooth might as well not even be there. Isn’t it clear that individual consciousness is just sickness.” (Pg 113)

“They say that there is a kind of flower that blooms only once a century. Then couldn’t there be one that flowers only once every thousand years – or once every ten thousand years? Maybe there are and we just don’t know it because today is itself that once-in-a-thousand-year moment.” (Pg 114)

“How do you know that nonsense isn’t a good thing? If human nonsense had been nurtured and developed for centuries, just as intelligence has, then perhaps something extraordinarily precious could have come from it.” (Pg 115)

“Who knows who you are… A person is a novel: you don’t know how it will end until the very last page. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be worth reading to the very end…” (Pg 141)

“Revolutions are infinite. Final things are for children because infinity scares children and it is important that children sleep peacefully at night…” (Pg 153)

“Here I saw, with my own eyes, that laughter was the most terrible weapon: you can kill anything with laughter – even murder itself.” (Pg 184)

“The sure sign of truth is its cruelty.” (Pg 187)

“Laughter comes in different colors. It is only the distant echo of an explosion occurring inside you…” (Pg 193)

Edith Wharton

The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

“Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.” (Pg 5)

“Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent, it was full of the twists and defenses of an instinctive guile.” (Pg 39)

“He did not mind being flippant about New York, but disliked to hear any one else take the same tone.” (Pg 63)

“The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!” (Pg 65)

“Original! We’re all as like each other as those dolls cut out of the same folded paper. We’re like patterns stenciled on a wall. Can’t you and I strike out for ourselves, May?” (Pg 70)

“If one had habitually breathed the New York air there were times when anything ess crystalline seemed stifling.”(Pg 79)

“Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people’s lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.” (Pg 95)

“I’m improvident: I live in the moment when I’m happy.” (Pg 110)

“Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience.” (Pg 120)

“Mistakes are always easy to make.” (Pg 121)

“You mustn’t think that a girl knows as little as her parents imagine.” (Pg 122)

“I couldn’t have my happiness made out of a wrong – an unfairness – to somebody else.” (Pg 122)

“He understood that her courage and initiative were all for others, and that she had none for herself.” (Pg 123)

“Beauty, even when distrustful of itself, awakens confidence in the manly heart.” (Pg 162)

“The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.” (Pg 164)

“To me the only death is monotony.” (Pg 170)

“No one could ever be jealous of her triumphs because she managed to give the feeling that she would have been just as serene if she had missed them.” (Pg 172)

 “Well-watching the contortions of the damned is supposed to be a favorite sport of the angels; but I believe even they don’t think people happier in hell.” (Pg 177)

“It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country.” (Pg 196)

“Each time you happen to me all over again.” (Pg 232)

“Each brick counts in a well-built wall.” (Pg 281)

“There are moments when a man’s imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level, and surveys the long windings of destiny.” (Pg 295)

“Only, I wonder – the thing one’s so certain of in advance: can it ever make one’s heart beat as wildly?” (Pg 286)

“What’s the use of making mysteries? It only makes people want to hose ‘em out.” (Pg 288)

H.G. Wells

The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells

“The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence.” (Pg 2)

“Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my experience is common. At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all.” (Pg 22)

“It’s no kindness to the right sort of wife to make her a widow.” (Pg 42)

“What good is religion if it collapses under calamity?” (Pg 54)

“Without the body the brain would, of course, become a mere selfish intelligence, without any of the emotional substratum of the human being.” (Pg 102)

“Aren’t you satisfied it is up with humanity? I am. We’re down; we’re beat.” (Pg 122)

“It’s the man that keeps on thinking comes through.” (Pg 123)

“Now whenever things are so that a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something, the weak, and those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking, always make for a sort of do-nothing religion, very pious and superior, and submit to persecution and the will of the Lord.” (Pg 126)

“For neither do men live nor die in vain.” (Pg 136)

Alice Walker

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

“It not nice to speak ill of the dead, one say, but the truth never can be ill.” (Pg 27)

“He strong in body but weak in will.” (Pg 35)

“Life don’t stop just cause you leave home.” (Pg 82)

“There’s no beginning or end to teaching and learning and working – it all runs together.” (Pg 125)

“Nobody feel better for killing nothing. They feel something is all.” (Pg 134)

“Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.” (Pg 152)

“Unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.” (Pg 169)

“Tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.” (Pg 176)

“When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest.” (Pg 177)

“God love everything you love – and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration.”

“You saying God vain?”

“Naw, not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

“Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me.” (Pg 182)

“I just feel funny living in a square. If I was square, then I could take it better.” (Pg 189)

“There’s something in all of us that wants a medal for what we have done. That wants to be appreciated.” (Pg 210)

“Men look like frogs to me. No matter how you kiss ‘em, as far as I’m concern, frogs is what they stay.” (Pg 224)

“When it come to what folks do together with they bodies, he say, anybody’s guess is as good as mine. But when you talk bout love I don’t have to guess. I have love and I have been love. And I thank God he let me gain understanding enough to know love can’t be halted just cause some peoples moan and groan.” (Pg 237)

“I couldn’t understand why us have life at all if all it can do most times is make us feel bad.” (Pg 246)

“It didn’t take long to realize I didn’t hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don’t mean nothing if you don’t ast why you here, period.” (Pg 247)

Voltaire

Candide - Voltaire

“Mankind were born to assist one another.” (Pg 14)

“Good heavens! To what excess does religious zeal transport the female kind.” (Pg 18)

“It was love; love, the comfort of the human species; love, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sensible beings; love, tender love!” (Pg 21)

“Mankind must in some things have deviated from their original innocence; for they were not born wolves, and yet they worry one another like those beasts of prey. God never gave them twenty-four pounders nor bayonets, and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another.” (Pg 23)

“If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others like?” (Pg 29)

“A modest woman may be once violated, but her virtue is greatly strengthened as a result.” (Pg 33)

“The goods of this world are common to all men, and that every one has an equal right to the enjoyment of them.” (Pg 39)

“I have been a hundred times on the point of killing myself, but still was fond of life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts. What can be more absurd than choosing to carry a burden that one really wants to throw to the ground? To detest, and yet to strive to preserve our existence? To caress the serpent that devours us, and hug him close to our bosoms till he has gnawed into our hearts?” (Pg 50)

“Ask each passenger to tell his story, and if there is one of them all who has not cursed his existence many times, and said to himself over and over again that he was the most miserable of men, I give you permission to throw me head-first into the sea.” (Pg 50)

“I am very ignorant, sir, but I am contented with my ignorance.” (Pg 70)

“Ours, I suppose, is the religion of the whole world. We worship God from morning till night.” (Pg 71)

“When people are tolerably at ease in a place, I’d think it would be to their interest to remain there.” (Pg 74)

“You see, my dear friend, how fleeting the riches of this world are; there is noting solid but virtue.” (Pg 76)

“Private griefs are still more dreadful than public calamities.” (Pg 82)

“I figured I knew as much as himself, and had no need of a guide to learn ignorance.” (Pg 109)

“Man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.” (Pg 127)

“Human grandeur is very dangerous, if we believe the testimonies of almost all philosophers.” (Pg 129)

“When man was put into the Garden of Eden, he was put there with the idea that he should work the land; and this proves that man was not born to be idle.” (Pg 129)

Kurt Vonnegut

Cat’s Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut

“There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.” (Pg 18)

“New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” (Pg 41)

“Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.” (Pg 63)

“Sometimes I wonder if he wasn’t born dead. I never met a man who was less interested in the living. Sometimes I think that’s the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone cold dead.” (Pg 68)

“Americans are always searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be.” (Pg 97)

“The highest possible form of treason is to say that Americans aren’t loved wherever they go, whatever they do. She tried to make the point that American foreign policy should recognize hate rather than imagine love.” (Pg 98)

“I wanted all things

To seem to make sense,

So we could all be happy, yes,

Instead of tense

And I made up lies

So that they fit all nice,

And I made this sad world

A par-a-dise.” (Pg 127)

“What makes you think a writer isn’t a drug salesman?” (Pg 153)

“Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are.” (Pg 198)

“MAKE RELIGION LIVE!” (Pg 215)

“When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.” (Pg 231)

“Without accurate records of the past, how can men and women be expected to avoid making serious mistakes in the future?” (Pg 237)

“What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing. “ (Pg 245)

“Each one of us has to be what he or she is.” (Pg 267)

Slaughter-House Five - Kurt Vonnegut

“What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too.” (Pg 3)

“We went to the New York World’s Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.” (Pg 18)

“There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.” (Pg 19)

“I looked through the Gideon Bible in my motel room for tales of great destruction.” (Pg 21)

“When a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.” (Pg 27)

“There’s more to life than what you read in books.” (Pg 38)

“Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.” (Pg 86)

“People would be surprised if they knew how much in this world was due to prayers.” (Pg 103)

“We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments.” (Pg 117)

“It is time for you to go home to your wives and children, and it is time for me to be dead for a little while – and then live again.” (Pg 142-143)

“Billy was having an adventure very common among people without power in time of war: He was trying to prove to a willfully deaf and blind enemy that he was interesting to hear and see.” (Pg 193)

“That was one of the things about the end of the war: Absolutely anybody who wanted a weapon could have one.” (Pg 195)

“Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does.” (Pg 198)

“If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still – if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I’m grateful that so many of those moments are nice.” (Pg 211)

John Updike

Rabbit, Run - John Updike

“There’s nothing to getting old, it takes nothing.” (Pg 6)

“Be what you are.” (Pg 10)

“Learn to understand your talents, and then work to develop them.” (Pg 10)

“The only way to get somewhere, you know, is to figure out where you’re going before you go there.” (Pg 26)

“You can’t make gold out of lead.” (Pg 51)

“After you’re first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.” (Pg 92)

“If you’re telling me I’m not mature, that’s one thing I don’t cry over since as far as I can make out it’s the same thing as being dead.” (Pg 93)

“Funny, the world just can’t touch you once you follow your instincts.” (Pg 94)

“You know how it is with fathers, you never escape the idea that maybe after all they’re right.” (Pg 109)

“Christianity isn’t looking for a rainbow. If it were what you think it is we’d pass out opium at services. We’re trying to serve God, not be God.” (Pg 115)

“If you have the guts to be yourself, other people’ll pay your price.” (Pg 129)

“Some die young; some are born old.” (Pg 138)

“Men are all heart and women are all body. I don’t know who’s supposed to have the brains.” (Pg 138)

“That’s what you have, Harry: life. It’s a strange gift and I don’t know how we’re supposed to use it but I know it’s the only gift we get and it’s a good one.” (Pg 192)

“The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk.” (Pg 194)

"It’s one thing to get hell from other people and another from your own parents.” (Pg 247)