NationStates Jolt Archive

I recall a thread of favourite movie quotes so I thought we could have a thread on favourite quotes from books.

Here are 3 of my favourites - another, of course is in my signature.

1) Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep:

"A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy..."

(An old man has been forced to give up smoking and drinking and derives pleasure by watching the detective, Philip Marlowe, indulging in same.)

2) William Shakespeare, MacBeth:

"...McDuff was from his Mother's Womb
Untimely ripp'd"

(McDuff's response to MacBeth's claim that he cannot be killed by any man born of woman. To me the words somehow convey the sheer horror of the event and the play generally.)

3) Patrick White, The Tree of Man, writing on the virtues of untidiness:

"Everything that was gathered there seemed to have been put where it could be found, and that is more than can be said for tidiness."

"Manuscripts don't burn"

"Radix malorum est cupiditas"

Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale

"It was the lonely hour of fifteen."
Orwell's 1984

"It was the lonely hour of fifteen."
Orwell's 1984

Heh, one of my favourite opening line is from the same book.

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

"Lord, what can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man?"

Death in Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett. One of his deeper novels, I think.

"Non ti curar di loro, ma guarda e passa." (Commedia, Dante Alighieri) I use this one quite frequently.

"Nescio, sed fieri sentio, et excrucior". (Catullus)

"Menin aede, thea, Pelidaeo Akhireys" (Iliades, Homer)

"One Ring to rule them all". (The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien)

"Wer mein Speeres Spitze fürchtet, der schreite das Feuer nie!" (Die Walküre, Wagner)

"Don't panic." (The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams)

"Do not confuse “duty” with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anytbing from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect. But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants “just a few minutes of your time, please--this won’t take long.” Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time--and squawk for more! So learn to say No--and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you. (This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don’t do it because it is “expected” of you.)"

- Time Enough For Love by Robert A. Heinlein

"All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true' "

Terry Pratchett - The Last Continent

The last line of 1984 - I won't write it cos it would spoil the book. It's my favorate ending ever - so disturbing.

A quote by Dostoevsky that Simone de Beauvoir prefaces THe Blood of Others with

"Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being"

Anything from "the Hippoptamus", it's that damn good.

Or "She should have died hereafter..." from "Macbeth".

The last two pages of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré are maybe the best thing I've read in fiction.

I almost started this exact thread the other day. :p Currently, this is one of my favourites:

"Oh, you're so sweet. And maybe I'd look lovely, darling, and be so thin and exciting to you and you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said. "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said, "that's what I want too."


Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

---

"Every so often I wonder what on earth we are waiting for."
Silence.
"For it to be too late, Madame."

Alessandra, Ocean Sea

---

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don't grow on trees, like in the old days. So where does one find love? There's the first kiss. The sloppy kiss. The peck. The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we shouldn't be doing this kiss. The but your lips taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss. The I wish you'd quit smoking kiss. The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad sometimes kiss. The I know your tongue like the back of my hand kiss.


But one kiss levitates above all the others. The intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss. The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss. Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

Jeffrey McDaniel, The Archipelago of Kisses

Dang thats one of my fav too. But to be fair most of Pratchett's books have great lines

It's true Pratchett has come up with a lot of great lines. one of mine is
"Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through with the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet you act as if there were some sort of rightness in the universe by which it may be judged"

Another great quote from Death, and he does have a good few.

"Lord, what can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man?"

Death in Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett. One of his deeper novels, I think.

Dang thats one of my fav too. But to be fair most of Pratchett's books have great lines

"The world made me a whore; now I turn it into a brothel."

This is life and years of this will pass, for this is what it´s meant to be: Shut the doors! Shut the doors! Shut the doors!

Anne Rice, Cry to Heaven

Keep it like it was, not how it is.

By Edward Abbey from the Monkey Wrench Gang.

What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmorland. No, my fair cousin:
If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will, I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It ernes me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace, I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more.
Rather proclaim it presently through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart. His passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the Feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a-tiptoe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall see this day and live t'old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say "To-morrow is Saint Crispian":
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars
And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day. (IV, iii)

possibly the biggest pump-up speech ever written

The hatred that kills poets is laid to rest by their poetry.

-Pablo Neruda

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.

Wilde,

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;
Five will return, and one go alone.

Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning, stone out of song;
Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw;
Six Signs the circle, and the grail gone before.

Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the Sleepers, oldest of the old;
Power from the green witch, lost beneath the sea;
All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree.
- Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper.

"One wonders what they will do with all that meat."
- Poledra to Belgarath while observing a battlefield (Belgariad)

Heh, one of my favourite opening line is from the same book.

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

Here's a few of my favourite opening sentences:

1. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

2. Samuel Beckett, Murphy:

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."

3. Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude:

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

4. Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49:

"One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to discover that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make job of sorting it all out more than honorary."

5. William Shakespeare, King Richard III:

"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York..."

6. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina:

"All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion."

7. Patrick White, The Aunt's Story:

"But old Mrs Goodman did die at last."

"The world made me a whore; now I turn it into a brothel."

Lagendary.

"Life's too short to be long about the forms of it."

-- Lawrence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey

This is the narrator Parson Yorick's explanation for his decision to get into a strange lady's carriage rather than go to the concert he was orginally headed for when they crossed paths.

Guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus' works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain't hardly ever a nice fella.

Of Mice and Men. The only book in school I ever liked.

It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.

Catcher in the Rye. I don't know why, but this quote amused me a great deal. Hated the rest of the book though...

And in extreme contrast to my first post, there's the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot by Alexander Pope. It's my favorite poem of all I've ever read, and I love every word of it, but here are some of my favorite parts (some even remind me of NSG :p):

Out with it, Dunciad! let the secret pass,
That secret to each fool, that he's an ass:
The truth once told (and wherefore should we lie?)
The queen of Midas slept, and so may I.

You think this cruel? take it for a rule,
No creature smarts so little as a fool.
Let peals of laughter, Codrus! round thee break,
Thou unconcern'd canst hear the mighty crack:
Pit, box, and gall'ry in convulsions hurl'd,
Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world.
Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through,
He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew;
Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain,
The creature's at his dirty work again;
Thron'd in the centre of his thin designs;
Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines!

A man's true merit 'tis not hard to find,
But each man's secret standard in his mind,
That casting weight pride adds to emptiness,
This, who can gratify? for who can guess?

Oh let me live my own! and die so too!
("To live and die is all I have to do:")
Maintain a poet's dignity and ease,
And see what friends, and read what books I please.

Curs'd be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,
That tends to make one worthy man my foe,
Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,
Or from the soft-ey'd virgin steal a tear!
But he, who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace,
Insults fall'n worth, or beauty in distress,
Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about,
Who writes a libel, or who copies out:
That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,
Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame;
Who can your merit selfishly approve,
And show the sense of it without the love;
Who has the vanity to call you friend,
Yet wants the honour, injur'd, to defend;
Who tells what'er you think, whate'er you say,
And, if he lie not, must at least betray:
Who to the Dean, and silver bell can swear,
And sees at Cannons what was never there;
Who reads, but with a lust to misapply,
Make satire a lampoon, and fiction, lie.
A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.

Let Sporus tremble--"What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?"
Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'r enjoys,
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.
His wit all see-saw, between that and this ,
Now high, now low, now Master up, now Miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the rabbins have express'd,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
This last one is an insulting portrait of a real person Pope had a running feud with -- John, Lord Hervey. Pope was probably the most vicious poet the English language has ever seen. :)

Dang thats one of my fav too. But to be fair most of Pratchett's books have great lines

He seems to be the most mentioned writer in NSG.

So, where do I start?

I like this one: Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up "What's that?" - It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said "this is a man", "this is a house", etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks: what's this then?

I love this topic, but I have no quotes off the top of my head. I have read far too many books in my time to remember any single quote. But one of the greatest lines I've ever read is found in a work of Neil Gaiman and Terry Brook in refrenece to a character known as Crowley: "An angel who didn't so much as fall as saunter vaguely downward."

The imagery in that simple sentence is so incredibly awesome that I can't deny it.

"I've seen through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I'm telling you, he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get." --Ender's Game

About the Verbover rebbe's eyes:

"They know what Landsman has lost, what he has squandered and let slip from his grasp through doubt, faithlessness, and the pursuit of being tough. They understand the furious wobble that throws off the trajectory of Landsman's good intentions. They comprehend the love affair that Landsman has with violence, his wild willingness to put his body out there on the street to break and to be broken." --The Yiddish Policemen's Union

"GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER. MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT. GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD'S INSTRUMENT." --A Prayer for Owen Meany

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

- Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide

Intellect is not a cure
-American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis

What do you know of what I know?
-Ged, The Earthsea Quartet, Ursula leGuin

This is not Romeo, he's some other where
-Romeo, Romeo and Juliet, Guess Who

Can't remember any others right now.


And on a side note: first post (of mine)! Whee...

I love this topic, but I have no quotes off the top of my head. I have read far too many books in my time to remember any single quote. But one of the greatest lines I've ever read is found in a work of Neil Gaiman and Terry Brook in refrenece to a character known as Crowley: "An angel who didn't so much as fall as saunter vaguely downward."

The imagery in that simple sentence is so incredibly awesome that I can't deny it.

Another mention for Pratchett as that's from Good Omens /by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, not Terry Brook. Probably my favourite Pratchett book Gaiman seems to bring an extra layer of darkness to the proceedings

He seems to be the most mentioned writer in NSG.

So, where do I start?

It not his best but try hogfather first, it the most user friendly, after that read the watch books, then any there all good.

I love this topic, but I have no quotes off the top of my head. I have read far too many books in my time to remember any single quote. But one of the greatest lines I've ever read is found in a work of Neil Gaiman and Terry Brook in refrenece to a character known as Crowley: "An angel who didn't so much as fall as saunter vaguely downward."

The imagery in that simple sentence is so incredibly awesome that I can't deny it.

You gi#ot that wrong, it is Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman Good Omans.
*smack Croatoan Green with a newspaper
hope you learn you lesson

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

- Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide

You forgot the last part:

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

"Chicago develops slowly, like a migraine."

-Neil Gaiman America Gods As someone who has come up on Chicago on my way to MN from VA, I can attest this is true.

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

"It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier."

-Robert Heinlein Time Enough For Love

"I will accept the rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."

Robert Heinlein The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

"Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail."

Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol One of the greatest opening lines.

"It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much — everything — in a flash — before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence."

- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

"Hath not a Jew eyes ? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions ? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is ? If you prick us, do we not bleed ? If you tickle us, do we not laugh ? If you poison us, do we not die ?"

- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

- Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide

Which book is that from? I had thought I read them all but that escapes me.

Another mention for Pratchett as that's from Good Omens /by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, not Terry Brook. Probably my favourite Pratchett book Gaiman seems to bring an extra layer of darkness to the proceedings

My bad. I haven't read the book in a long time... and when I did I read it more for Gaiman then Pratchett... I could only remember it was Terry something and I recall seeing the name Terry Brook alot.

"For now we see but through a mirror, darkly."
- 1 Corinthians 13

"[They]took the ship that Círdan had made ready. In the twilight of the autumn it sailed out of Mithlond, until the seas of the Bent World fell beneath it, and the winds of the round sky troubled it no more, and borne into the Ancient West, and an end was come for the Eldar of story and of song"
- The History of Middle Earth

"Principles, principles! That’s what it comes down to. Do I compromise my almighty principles? But how do I not compromise them if it involves a chance to get the crew more than halfway home? How do I tell them my principles are so important, that I would deny them that opportunity?"
- Kathryn Janeway

"For now we see but through a mirror, darkly."
- 1 Corinthians 13

"[They]took the ship that Círdan had made ready. In the twilight of the autumn it sailed out of Mithlond, until the seas of the Bent World fell beneath it, and the winds of the round sky troubled it no more, and borne into the Ancient West, and an end was come for the Eldar of story and of song"
- The History of Middle Earth

"Principles, principles! That’s what it comes down to. Do I compromise my almighty principles? But how do I not compromise them if it involves a chance to get the crew more than halfway home? How do I tell them my principles are so important, that I would deny them that opportunity?"
- Kathryn Janeway

I must say that I´m not a Bible reader, but that quote has always been one of my favorites.

I must say that I´m not a Bible reader, but that quote has always been one of my favorites.

Me neither :)

Me neither :)

:p

On topic: I found this poem by Stan Rice, and it´s one of my favorites.

Cannibal
Hide me
from me.
Fill these
holes with eyes
for mine are not
mine. Hide
me head & need
for I am no good
so dead in life
so much time.
Be wing, and
shade my me
from my desire
to be
hooked fish.
That worm
wine
looks sweet and
makes my me
blind. And, too,
my heart hide
for I shall at
this rate it also
eat in time.

'The first thing we should do is kill all the lawyers.'
Dick The Butcher in Henry VI;
William Shakespeare.

'Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight.
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die.'
Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep;
Mary Frye.

Of Heaven
Who are these shades we wait for and believe
will come some evening in limousines
from Heaven?
The rose
though it knows
is thratless
and cannot ssay.
My mortal half laughs.
The code and the message are not the same.
And what is an angel
but a ghost in drag?

Stan Rice

"She held it in her hands, gently rubbing the long, warm cylinder, its skin taut against the rich, full moisture of the inside and perfectly shaped yet smaller than the others she had gathered in the past hot month; her fingers massaged the soft, spongy tip - it was satiated and rich, ready to open and burst white ime onto her fingers - she thought to put it in her mouth, but, no, a little too ripe, she thought and picked up the Chinese carving knife from the counter and chopped off the rotten end: "The zucchini season is almost over and, Frank my dear, I don't give a damn," she said to her husband who, startled, wide-eyed, looked up at her from over the rim of his coffee cup and stopped in midbite of his zucchini bread."
- Pat Ramberg, It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: The Best (?) from the Bulwer-Lytton Contest

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

from Black Rook in Rainy Weather by Sylvia Plath

Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky,
Till at my throat a strangling sob
Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb
Sent instant tears into my eyes;
O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e'er hereafter hide from me
Thy radiant identity!
Thou canst not move across the grass
But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor speak, however silently,
But my hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way
Through the cool eve of every day;
God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Thy heart!

from Edna St. Vincent Millay's Renascence

"Modern Christianity, in dramatic reversal of its biblical form, promises to relieve the pain of living in a fall world."

"An aching soul is evidence not of neurosis or spiritual immaturity, but of realism."

both from Larry Crabb's book Inside Out

Ooops, that should have been the pain of living in a fallen world, not a fall world.

"Do not confuse “duty” with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anytbing from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect. But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants “just a few minutes of your time, please--this won’t take long.” Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time--and squawk for more! So learn to say No--and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you. (This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don’t do it because it is “expected” of you.)"

- Time Enough For Love by Robert A. Heinlein

Also from Time Enough for Love:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.