literature quotes

When you are about to die, a wombat is better than no company at all.
-- Roger Zelazny, "Doorways in the Sand"

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.
-- Wm. Shakespeare

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt
of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He
brought death into the world.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is
nothing but cabbage with a college education.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
-- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"

Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
-- Mark Twain

The Least Successful Collector
Betsy Baker played a central role in the history of collecting. She
was employed as a servant in the house of John Warburton (1682-1759) who had
amassed a fine collection of 58 first edition plays, including most of the
works of Shakespeare.
One day Warburton returned home to find 55 of them charred beyond
legibility. Betsy had either burned them or used them as pie bottoms. The
remaining three folios are now in the British Museum.
The only comparable literary figure was the maid who in 1835 burned
the manuscript of the first volume of Thomas Carlyle's "The Hisory of the
French Revolution", thinking it was wastepaper.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt.
-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"

What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?
-- Nero Wolfe, "The League of Frightened Men"

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted
armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.
-- Ernest Hemingway

Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind. Then it passes off and I'm
as intelligent as ever.
-- Samuel Beckett, "Endgame"

No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!
-- Sherlock Holmes

The only people for me are the mad ones -- the ones who are mad to live,
mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn
like fabulous yellow Roman candles.
-- Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is
in it - and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot
stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that
is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
-- Mark Twain

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.
-- Mark Twain

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"

Delay not, Caesar. Read it instantly.
-- Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" 3,1

Here is a letter, read it at your leisure.
-- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice" 5,1

[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to I/O system services.]

The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference
between a mermaid and a seal.
-- Mark Twain

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has
only nine lives.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

"Elves and Dragons!" I says to him. "Cabbages and potatoes are better
for you and me."
-- J. R. R. Tolkien