While Quotes (page 43)
The art of reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries may be skipped these days, when we have the results of them in our modern culture without going over the ground again. And even of the books we decide to read, there are almost always large portions which do not concern us, and which we are sure to forget the day after we have read them. The art is to skip all that does not concern us, while missing nothing that we really need. No external guidance can teach us this; for nobody but...
Philip Gilbert Hamerton
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed. And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light. Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: And love is fire. And when I say at need. I love thee ... mark! ... I love thee -- in thy sight. I stand transfigured, glorified aright, With conscience of the new rays that proceed. Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low. In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures. Who love God, God accepts while loving...
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Jane remembers those years, though, as if they had been [a movie]--in part because her friends...always talked about everything as if it was over ("Remember last night?"), while holding out the possibility that whatever happened could be rerun. Neil didn't have that sense of things. He thought people shouldn't romanticize ordinary life. "Our struggles, our little struggles," he would whisper, in bed, at night. Sometimes he or she would click on some of the flashlights and consider the...
Ann Beattie
When I watch the living meet, And the moving pageant file. Warm and breathing through the street. Where I lodge a little while, If the heats of hate and lust. In the house of flesh are strong, Let me mind the house of dust. Where my sojourn shall be long. In the nation that is not. Nothing stands that stood before; There revenges are forgot, And the hater hates no more; Lovers lying two and two. Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through. Never turns him to the bride.
A. E. Housman