Have you ever connected so profoundly with a line from a book that reading it makes your heart feel like it might burst? I was reading Notes from Underground and it has so many gut wrenching lines but these lines specifically hit me hard..
“We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don’t know what ourselves….
Why, we don’t even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.”
by EconomyPirate1266
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>I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs, a very endearing sight, I’m sure you’ll agree. And even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half submerged log.
>As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen. Mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that is when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain.
>If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.
Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals
“We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us.”
I come back to War and Peace, and this line specifically, at any point in my life where I need encouragement to face change in my life, or just to find that spark of joy that sometimes gets dimmed by random circumstances. I loved this prompt because the phrase “As long as there is life there is happiness.” immediately popped into my head, and it was something I needed to hear today. Thank you OP. 🥲
I always liked this final line…
“And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
>!The Great Gatsby!< ( in case anyone want to guess – though it’s probably very well known)
Also for those who like fantasy. Not so literary or poetic but in context give me goosebumps.
“Kneel and swear to the Lord Dragon, or you will be knelt.”
― Robert Jordan, Lord of Chaos
And
“The Golden Crane flies for Tarmon Gai’don!”
― Robert Jordan, Knife of Dreams
You’d have to read and like the books to feel the same.