126 Classic Quotes

Are you looking for timeless wisdom and inspiration? Welcome to our curated collection of the top 126 classic quotes! These powerful words have withstood the test of time, offering insights, motivation, and a touch of nostalgia. Whether you're seeking profound reflections, motivational mantras, or simply a dose of eloquence, these quotes are sure to resonate with you. Each one has been carefully selected to bring you the very best from legendary thinkers, writers, and leaders. Dive in and let these classic quotes inspire your thoughts, fuel your creativity, and elevate your spirit.

1. “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?” - Jane Austen

2. “Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?” - William Makepeace Thackeray

3. “All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.” - John Ruskin

4. “Ut haec ipsa qui non sentiat deorum vim habere is nihil omnino sensurus esse videatur."If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all.” - Horace

5. “A man leaves his great house because he's boredWith life at home, and suddenly returns,Finding himself no happier abroad.He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,You'ld think he's going to a house on fire,And yawns before he's put his foot inside,Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,Or even rushes back to town again.So each man flies from himself (vain hope, becauseIt clings to him the more closely against his will)And hates himself because he is sick in mindAnd does not know the cause of his disease.” - Lucretius

6. “She had come to that state where the horror of the universe and its smallness are both visible at the same time—the twilight of the double vision in which so many elderly people are involved. If this world is not to our taste, well, at all events, there is Heaven, Hell, Annihilation—one or other of those large things, that huge scenic background of stars, fires, blue or black air. All heroic endeavour, and all that is known as art, assumes that there is such a background, just as all practical endeavour, when the world is to our taste, assumes that the world is all. But in the twilight of the double vision, a spiritual muddledom is set up for which no high-sounding words can be found; we can neither act nor refrain from action, we can neither ignore nor respect Infinity.” - E. M. Forster

7. “In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted—Balder, Persephone—but [in India] the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them.” - E. M. Forster

8. “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” - Italo Calvino

9. “When you re-read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before.” - Clifton Fadiman

10. “I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men.” - Helen Keller

11. “I live not in myself, but I becomePortion of that around me: and to meHigh mountains are a feeling, but the humof human cities torture.” - George Gordon Byron

12. “Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as whenThe bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,Her ashes new-create another heirAs great in admiration as herself.” - William Shakespeare

13. “Vera incessu patuit dea.(The goddess indubitable was revealed in her step.)” - Virgil

14. “But the older he grew and the more intimately he came to know his brother, the oftener the thought occurred to him that the power of working for the general welfare – a power of which he felt himself entirely destitute – was not a virtue but rather a lack of something: not a lack of kindly honesty and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of the power of living, of what is called heart – the aspiration which makes a man choose one out of all the innumerable paths of life that present themselves, and desire that alone.” - Leo Tolstoy

15. “Nature pulls one way and human nature another.” - E. M. Forster

16. “Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer’s 'Odyssey' as if it were the sweet body of a woman.” - Roman Payne

17. “It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written.” - Karl Marx

18. “The last thing he ever said to me was, 'Just always be waiting for me, and then some night you will hear me crowing.” - J.M. Barrie

19. “Every new book we read in our brief and busy lives means that a classic is left unread.” - B.R. Myers

20. “But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.” - Jane Austen

21. “They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another. With the exception, perhaps, of Admiral and Mrs. Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy, (Anne could allow no other exception even among the married couples) there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so simliar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become aquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.” - Jane Austen

22. “No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.” - Charlotte Brontë

23. “When sonneteering Wordsworth re-creates the landing of Mary Queen of Scots at the mouth of the Derwent -Dear to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed,The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore- he unveils nothing less than a canvas by Rubens, baroque master of baroque masters; this is the landing of a TRAGIC Marie de Medicis.Yet so receptive was the English ear to sheep-Wordsworth's perverse 'Enough of Art' that it is not any of these works of supreme art, these master-sonnets of English literature, that are sold as picture postcards, with the text in lieu of the view, in the Lake District! it is those eternally, infernally sprightly Daffodils.” - Brigid Brophy

24. “The thought of what America would be likeIf the Classics had a wide circulationTroubles my sleep (Cantico del Sole)” - Ezra Pound

25. “O teach me how I should forget to think (1.1.224)” - William Shakespeare

26. “Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness—she with those delicate feet of hers, never touching the earth, gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. She entangles one man, now another.” - Homer

27. “But now, as it is, sorrows, unending sorrows must surge within your heart as well—for your own son’s death. Never again will you embrace him stiding home. My spirit rebels—I’ve lost the will to live, to take my stand in the world of men—” - Homer

28. “You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat—coward!” - Homer

29. “…and they limp and halt, they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side, can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty, trudging after Ruin, maddening, blinding Ruin. But Ruin is strong and swift—She outstrips them all by far, stealing a march, leaping over the whole wide earth to bring mankind to grief.” - Homer

30. “…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives.” - Homer

31. “And his good wife will tear her cheeks in grief, his sons are orphans and he, soaking the soil red with his own blood, he rots away himself—more birds than women flocking round his body!” - Homer

32. “Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one—so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claim—the greater man.” - Homer

33. “Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it’s born with us the day that we are born.” - Homer

34. “You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?” - Homer

35. “Come then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in each other.” - Homer

36. “Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.” - Zora Neale Hurston

37. “There is remedy for all things except death - Don Quixote De La Mancha” - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

38. “And when long years and seasons wheeling brought around that point of time ordained for him to make his passage homeward, trials and dangers, even so, attended him even in Ithaca, near those he loved.” - Homer

39. “If there really is such a thing as turning in one's grave, Shakespeare must get a lot of exercise.” - George Orwell

40. “If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave.” - Emily Brontë

41. “When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.” - E.M. Forster

42. “The commercial work of today is the classics of tomorrow.” - Orson Scott Card

43. “Considering thus how much honor is awarded to antiquity, and how many times—letting pass infinite other examples—a fragment of an ancient statue has been bought at high price because someone wants to have it near oneself, to honor his house with it, and to be able to have it imitated by those who delight in that art, and how the latter then strive with all industry to represent it in all their works; and seeing, on the other hand, that the most virtuous works the histories show us, which have been done by ancient kingdoms and republics, by kings, captains, citizens, legislators, and others who have labored for their fatherland, are rather admired than imitated—indeed they are so much shunned by everyone in every least thing that no sign of that ancient virtue remains with us—I can do no other than marvel and grieve… From this it arises that the infinite number who read [the histories] take pleasure in hearing of the variety of accidents contained within them without thinking of imitating them, judging that imitation is not only difficult but impossible—as if heaven, sun, elements, men had varied in motion, order, and power from what they were in antiquity. Wishing, therefore, to turn men from this error, I have judged it necessary to write on all those books of Titus Livy...” - Niccolo Machiavelli

44. “Dismissing fantasy writing because some of it is bad is exactly like saying I'm not reading Jane Eyre because it is a romance and I know romance is crap.” - China Miéville

45. “The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it. ” - Benjamin Disraeli

46. “Many a law, many a commandment have I broken, but my word never.” - Walter Scott

47. “I saw the Cloud, though I did not foresee the Storm.” - Daniel Defoe

48. “Countless words count less than the silent balance between yin and yang” - Lao Tzu

49. “nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose” - Mary Shelley

50. “Got on! Got on! It's not a question of getting on. That's the wrong view altogether. The Classics aren't a ladder leading to quick success.” - Agatha Christie

51. “I could read the great books but the great books don't interest me.” - Charles Bukowski

52. “He might wish and wish and never get it - the beauty and the loving in the world!” - John Galsworthy

53. “Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over? Because, if it is to spite her, I should think - but you know best - that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think - but you know best - she was not worth gaining over.” - Charles Dickens

54. “Life if curious when reduced to its essentials” - Jean Rhys

55. “There is nothing alive more agonized than man / of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.” - Homer

56. “Well, Betsy," he said, "your mother tells me that you are going to use Uncle Keith's trunk for a desk. That's fine. You need a desk. I've often noticed how much you like to write. The way you eat up those advertising tablets from the store! I never saw anything like it. I can't understand it though. I never write anything but checks myself. ""Bob!" said Mrs. Ray. "You wrote the most wonderful letters to me before we were married. I still have them, a big bundle of them. Every time I clean house I read them over and cry.""Cry, eh?" said Mr. Ray, grinning. "In spite of what your mother says, Betsy, if you have any talent for writing, it comes from family. Her brother Keith was mighty talented, and maybe you are too. Maybe you're going to be a writer."Betsy was silent, agreeably abashed."But if you're going to be a writer," he went on, "you've got to read. Good books. Great books. The classics.” - Maud Hart Lovelace

57. “Betsy was so full of joy that she had to be alone. She went upstairs to her bedroom and sat down on Uncle Keith's trunk. Behind Tacy's house the sun had set. A wind had sprung up and the trees, their color dimmed, moved under a brooding sky. All the stories she had told Tacy and Tib seemed to be dancing in those trees, along with all the stories she planned to write some day and all the stories she would read at the library. Good stories. Great stories. The classics. Not Rena's novels.” - Maud Hart Lovelace

58. “Ništa je umreti - strašno je ne živeti.” - Victor Hugo

59. “Jonah-John-if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still-not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places, at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second, at each appointed place this Jonah was there.” - Kurt Vonnegut

60. “Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known” - Oscar Wilde

61. “Coming at twenty to his father's house, which was a very sink of filthy debauchery, he, chaste and pure as he was, simply withdrew in silence when to look on was unbearable, but without the slightest sign of contempt or condemnation. His father, who had once been in a dependent position, and so was sensitive and ready to take offense, met him at first with distrust and sullenness.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

62. “You are going, Jane?""I am going, sir.""You are leaving me?""Yes.""You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?"What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard was it to reiterate firmly, "I am going!""Jane!""Mr. Rochester.""Withdraw then, I consent; but remember, you leave me here in anguish. Go up to your own room, think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings; think of me."He turned away, he threw himself on his face on the sofa. "Oh, Jane! my hope, my love, my life!" broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a deep, strong sob.” - Charlotte Brontë

63. “May you not rest, as long as I am living. You said I killed you - haunt me, then.” - Emily Brontë

64. “I recognized it instantly. It was a made-up story, a fantasy, the tale of four kids who went through a magic wardrobe and found themselves in a strange new world. I'd read it more times than I could remember, and although I sneered at the thought of a magical land with friendly, talking animals, there were times when I wished, in my most secret moments, that I could find a hidden door that would take us allout of this place.” - Julie Kagawa

65. “Mega biblion, mega kakon (Big book, big evil)” - Callimachus

66. “Classics aren't books that are read for pleasure. Classics are books that are imposed on unwilling students, books that are subjected to analyses of "levels of significance" and other blatt, books that are dead.” - Alexei Panshin

67. “Many scholars forget, it seems to me, that our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding. The trouble is that very few of their laborious explanations stick in the memory. The mind drops them as a branch drops its overripe fruit. ... Again and again I ask impatiently, "Why concern myself with these explanations and hypotheses?" They fly hither and thither in my thought like blind birds beating the air with ineffectual wings. I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men.” - Helen Keller

68. “Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.''You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.''Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?''Before either.''I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry,' said the lad.'Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?''I can't, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do.''Well, then you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.''I should like that awfully.'The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. 'I shall stay with the real Dorian,' he said, sadly.” - Oscar Wilde

69. “I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter.” - Francine Prose

70. “¿Os dais cuenta cabal de la cadena de crímenes tramados por la nena? Crimen número uno: la acusada comete allanamiento de morada. Crimen número dos: el personaje se queda con tres platos de potaje. Crimen número tres: la muy cochina destroza una sillita isabelina. Crimen número cuatro: va la dama y se limpia los zapatos en la cama... Un juez no dudaría ni un instante: «¡Diez años de presidio a esa tunante!». Pero en la historia, tal como se cuenta, la miserable escapa tan contenta mientras los niños gritan, encantados: «¡Qué bien; Ricitos de oro se ha salvado!».” - Roald Dahl

71. “I am not what I am..” - William Shakespeare

72. “What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian's. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles overjoyed at the sight of the apparition – tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star…Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago.I found myself in a strange deserted city – an old city, like London – underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly – past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors.There was a cluster of men, all smoking pipes, gathered around an exhibit in a glass case that gleamed in the dim light and lit their faces ghoulishly from below.I drew nearer. In the case was a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. An Inca temple… click click click… the Pyramids… the Parthenon.History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment.'I thought I'd find you here,' said a voice at my elbow.It was Henry. His gaze was steady and impassive in the dim light. Above his ear, beneath the wire stem of his spectacles, I could just make out the powder burn and the dark hole in his right temple.I was glad to see him, though not exactly surprised. 'You know,' I said to him, 'everybody is saying that you're dead.'He stared down at the machine. The Colosseum… click click click… the Pantheon. 'I'm not dead,' he said. 'I'm only having a bit of trouble with my passport.''What?'He cleared his throat. 'My movements are restricted,' he said.'I no longer have the ability to travel as freely as I would like.'Hagia Sophia. St. Mark's, in Venice. 'What is this place?' I asked him.'That information is classified, I'm afraid.'1 looked around curiously. It seemed that I was the only visitor.'Is it open to the public?' I said.'Not generally, no.'I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn't time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point.'Are you happy here?' I said at last.He considered this for a moment. 'Not particularly,' he said.'But you're not very happy where you are, either.'St. Basil's, in Moscow. Chartres. Salisbury and Amiens. He glanced at his watch.'I hope you'll excuse me,' he said, 'but I'm late for an appointment.'He turned from me and walked away. I watched his back receding down the long, gleaming hall.” - Donna Tartt

73. “She was nothing more than a mere good-tempered, civil and obliging Young Woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her -- she was only an Object of Contempt” - Jane Austen

74. “While art thrives on the blazing colours of scandal, literature blossoms on the dark soil of tragedy.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

75. “Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.” - Henry David Thoreau

76. “Contudo, o mais corajoso dentre nós tem medo de si mesmo. A mutilação do selvagem tem a sua trágica sobrevivência na própria renúncia que corrompe as nossas vidas. Somos todos castigados por nossas renúncias. Cada impulso que tentamos aniquilar germina em nossa mente e nos envenena. Pecando, o corpo se liberta de seu pecado, porque a ação é um meio de purificação. Nada resta então a não ser a lembrança de um prazer ou a volúpia de um remorso. O único meio de livrar-se de uma tentação é ceder a ela. Se lhe resistirmos, as nossas almas ficarão doentes, desejando as coisas que se proibiram a si mesmas, e, além disso, sentirão desejo por aquilo que umas leis monstruosas fizeram monstruoso e ilegal. Já se disse que os grandes acontecimentos têm lugar no cérebro. É no cérebro e somente nele que têm tambem lugar os grandes pecados do mundo.” - Oscar Wilde

77. “Nada mudou. Afastada das sombras irreais da noite, ressurge a vida, na sua realidade já conhecida. Devemos retomá-la onde a deixamos e apodera-se de nós o terrível sentimento de continuidade necessária da energia no mesmo círculo monótono de hábitos estereotipados, ou então somos presas de um desejo selvagem de que nossas pálpebras se abram um dia sobre um mundo que tivesse sido refundido nas trevas para o nosso próprio prazer, um mundo onde as coisas apresentariam novas formas e cores, que teria mudado ou que teria outros segredos, um mundo em que o passado ocuparia pouco ou nenhum lugar, em que as lembranças não sobreviveriam sob a forma inconsciente de obrigação ou de pesar, uma vez que a recordação da própria felicidade oferece amarguras, assim como a lembrança do prazer já contém sua dor.” - Oscar Wilde

78. “And with regard to the resentment of his family, or the indignation of the world, if the former were excited by his marrying me, it would not give me one moment's concern-- and the world in general would have too much sense to join in the scorn.” - Jane Austen

79. “To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.” - Jane Austen

80. “Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor Aeschylus, nor Virgil even, works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equaled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never knew them.” - Henry David Thoreau

81. “La città di Leonia rifà se stessa tutti i giorni: ogni mattina la popolazione si risveglia tra lenzuola fresche, si lava con saponette appena sgusciate dall'involucro, indossa vestaglie nuove fiammanti, estrae dal più perfezionato frigorifero barattoli di latta ancora intonsi, ascoltando le ultime filastrocche che dall'ultimo modello d'apparecchio. Sui marciapiedi, avviluppati in tersi sacchi di plastica, i resti di Leonia d'ieri aspettano il carro dello spazzaturaio. Non solo i tubi di dentifricio schiacciati, lampadine fulminate, giornali, contenitori, materiali d'imballaggio, ma anche scaldabagni, enciclopedie, pianoforti, servizi di porcellana: più che dalle cose di ogni giorno vengono fabbricate vendute comprate, l'opulenza di Leonia si misura dalle cose che ogni giorno vengono buttate via per far posto alle nuove. Tanto che ci si chiede se la vera passione di Leonia sia davvero come dicono il godere delle cose nuove e diverse, o non piuttosto l'espellere, l'allontanare da sé, il mondarsi d'una ricorrente impurit à. Certo è che gli spazzaturai sono accolti come angeli, e il loro compito di rimuovere i resti dell'esistenza di ieri è circondato d'un rispetto silenzioso, come un rito che ispira devozione, o forse solo perché una volta buttata via la roba nessuno vuole più averci da pensare.Dove portino ogni giorno il loro carico gli spazzaturai nessuno se lo chiede: fuori dalla città, certo; ma ogni anno la città s'espande, e gli immondezzai devono arrestrare più lontano; l'imponenza del gettito aumenta e le cataste s'inalzano, si stratificano, si dispiegano su un perimetro più vasto. Aggiungi che più l'arte di Leonia eccelle nel fabbricare nuovi materiali, più la spazzatura migliora la sua sostanza, resiste al tempo, alle intemperie, a fermantazioni e combustioni. E' una fortezza di rimasugli indistruttibili che circonda Leonia, la sovrasta da ogni lato come un acrocoro di montagne. Il risultato è questo: che più Leonia espelle roba più ne accumula; le squame del suo passato si saldano in una corazza che non si può togliere; rinnovandosi ogni giorno la città conserva tutta se stessa nella sola forma definitiva: quella delle spazzature d'ieri che s'ammucchiano sulle spazzature dell'altroieri e di tutti i suoi giorni e anni e lustri.Il pattume di Leonia a poco a poco invaderebbe il mondo, se sullo sterminato immondezzaio non stessero premendo, al di là dell'estremo crinale, immondezzai d'altre città, che anch'esse respingono lontano da sé le montagne di rifiuti. Forse il mondo intero, oltre i confini di Leonia, è ricoperto da crateri di spazzatura, ognuno con al centro una metropoli in eruzione ininterrotta. I confini tra le città estranee e nemiche sono bastioni infetti in cui i detriti dell'una e dell'altra si puntellano a vicenda, si sovrastano, si mescolano.Più ne cresce l'altezza, più incombe il pericolo delle frane: basta che un barattolo, un vecchio pneumatico, un fiasco spagliato rotoli dalla parte di Leonia e una valanga di scarpe spaiate, calendari d'anni trascorsi, fiori secchi sommergerà la città nel proprio passato che invano tentava di respingere, mescolato con quello delle altre città limitrofe, finalmente monde: un cataclisma spianerà la sordida catena montuosa, cancellerà ogni traccia della metropoli sempre vestita a nuovo. Già dalle città vicine sono pronti coi rulli compressori per spianare il suolo, estendersi nel nuovo territorio, ingrandire se stesse, allontanare i nuovi immondezzai.” - Italo Calvino

82. “What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering. For weeks, Marianne, I've had this pressing on me without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature. It was forced on me by the very person whose prior claims ruined all my hope. I have endured her exultations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.” - Jane Austen

83. “Do you think that I am a machine? That I can bear it?Do you think because I'm poor, plain, obsure, and littlethat I have no heart? That I'm without soul?I have as much heart as you and as much soul.And if God had given me as much beauty and wealth,I would make it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you.” - Charlotte Brontë

84. “In order to witness clearly the march of humanity from its inception to the present moment, an understanding of how humankind has held encounter with the divine as central is crucial. Ancient humanity provides us with an excellent laboratory for gaining such an understanding.” - Roger D. Woodard

85. “You're on your own little quest, an there's a bit of Frodo Baggins in you, and a bit of Verne's Paganel, and just a tiny drop of Robinson Cursoe, and a smidgeon of Radishchev.” - Sergei Lukyanenko

86. “Só o teu amor é o inimigo. Ti es ti, aínda que sexas un Montesco. ¿Que é un Montesco? Non é man, nin pé, nin brazo, nin cara, nin parte ningunha do corpo. ¡Cambia o nome!¿Que é un nome? O que chamamos rosa, con outro nome tería o mesmo recendo.Se Romeo non se chamase Romeo,conservaría a súa mesma perfección sen ese título. Romeo, rexeita ese nome que non forma parte de tie a cambio tómame a min.” - William Shakespeare

87. “Pearls' burst out the Snork Maiden excitedly. 'Could ankle rings be made out of pearls?''I should think they could,' said Moomintoll. 'Ankle-rings, and nose-rings and ear-rings and engagement rings...” - Tove Jansson

88. “Analiza la cuestión, ¿cómo pretendes que sea un ser agradable si soy un monstruo, o que sea generoso con los demás, si se muestran implacables conmigo? Si tú me arrojases a uno de esos barrancos helados, o me destrozaras con tus manos, ¿verdad que no lo considerarías un crimen? Y yo me pregunto, ¿por qué debo de respectar al que me desprecia? Haz que el hombre, en vez de odiarme, me acepte y me enseñe sus bondades, y serás testigo de todas las cosas buenas que soy capaz de hacer por vosotros.” - Mary W. Shelley

89. “I read a lot. I always have, but in those two years I gorged myself on books with a voluptuous, almost erotic gluttony. I would go to the local library and take out as many as I could, and then lock myself in the bedsit and read solidly for a week. I went for old books, the older the better--Tolstoy, Poe, Jacobean tragedies, a dusty translation of Laclos--so that when I finally resurfaced, blinking and dazzled, it took me days to stop thinking in their cool, polished, crystalline rhythms.” - Tana French

90. “Then said he, ’I am going to my Father’s; and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder.’.... So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.” - John Bunyan

91. “Freedom is a need of the soul, and nothing else. It is in striving toward God that the soul strives continually after a condition of freedom. God alone is the inciter and guarantor of freedom. He is the only guarantor. External freedom is only an aspect of interior freedom. Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible. Religion and freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul dies. Without the soul there is no justification for freedom. Necessity is the only ultimate justification known to the mind.” - Whittaker Chambers

92. “Mama, the more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.” - Jane Austen

93. “You aren’t really a nigger-lover, then, are you?” “I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody… I’m hard put, sometimes—baby, it’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you. So don’t let Mrs. Dubose get you down. She has enough troubles of her own.” - Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

94. “There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked this way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted attitudes, character shadings, even gestures, as having been repeated in each generation and refined by time. Thus the dicta No Crawford Minds His Own Business, Every Third Merriweather Is Morbid, The Truth Is Not in the Delafields, All the Bufords Walk Like That, were simply guides to daily living: never take a check from a Delafield without a discreet call to the bank; Miss Maudie Atkinson’s shoulder stoops because she was a Buford; if Mrs. Grace Merriweather sips gin out of Lydia E. Pinkham bottles it’s nothing unusual—her mother did the same.” - Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

95. “The thing is, what I’m tryin‘ to say is—they do get on a lot better without me, I can’t help them any. They ain’t mean. They buy me everything I want, but it’s now—you’ve-got-it-go-play-with-it. You’ve got a roomful of things. I-got-you-that-book-so-go-read-it.” - Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

96. “Well that ain’t so. You get babies from each other. But there’s this man, too—he has all these babies just waitin‘ to wake up, he breathes life into ’em…” Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talking himself to sleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy island there rose the faded image of a gray house with sad brown doors. “Dill?” “Mm?” “Why do you reckon Boo Radley’s never run off?” Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me. “Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run off to…” - Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

97. “I’ve heard that lawyers’ children, on seeing their parents in court in the heat of argument, get the wrong idea: they think opposing counsel to be the personal enemies of their parents, they suffer agonies, and are surprised to see them often go out arm-in-arm with their tormenters during the first recess. This was not true of Jem and me. We acquired no traumas from watching our father win or lose. I’m sorry that I can’t provide any drama in this respect; if I did, it would not be true. We could tell, however, when debate became more acrimonious than professional, but this was from watching lawyers other than our father. I never heard Atticus raise his voice in my life, except to a deaf witness.” - Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

98. “I wondered if anybody had ever called her “ma’am,” or “Miss Mayella” in her life; probably not, as she took offense to routine courtesy. What on earth was her life like? I soon found out.” - Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

99. “As Tom Robinson gave his testimony, it came to me that Mayella Ewell must have been the loneliest person in the world. She was even lonelier than Boo Radley, who had not been out of the house in twenty-five years. When Atticus asked had she any friends, she seemed not to know what he meant, then she thought he was making fun of her. She was as sad, I thought, as what Jem called a mixed child: white people wouldn’t have anything to do with her because she lived among pigs; Negroes wouldn’t have anything to do with her because she was white. She couldn’t live like Mr. Dolphus Raymond, who preferred the company of Negroes, because she didn’t own a riverbank and she wasn’t from a fine old family. Nobody said, “That’s just their way,” about the Ewells. Maycomb gave them Christmas baskets, welfare money, and the back of its hand. Tom Robinson was probably the only person who was ever decent to her. But she said he took advantage of her, and when she stood up she looked at him as if he were dirt beneath her feet.” - Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

100. “No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards." - Atticus Finch” - Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

101. “The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption—the evil assumption—that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber. Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie as black as Tom Robinson’s skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women—black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.” - Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

102. “But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and ajury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.” - Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

103. “1 )Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them.2)A classic is a work which constantly generates a pulviscular cloud of critical discourse around it, but which always shakes the particles off.” - Italo Calvino

104. “Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.” - Jane Austen

105. “Unasked, Unsought, Love gives itself but is not bought” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

106. “I don't believe fine young ladies enjoy themselves a bit more than we do, in spite of our burned hair, old gowns, one glove apiece, and tight slippers that sprain our ankles when we are silly enough to wear them.” - Louisa May Alcott

107. “They always looked back before turning the corner, for their mother was always at the window to nod and smile, and wave her hand to them. Somehow it seemed as if they couldn't have got through the day without that, for whatever their mood might be, the last glimpse of that motherly face was sure to affect them like sunshine.” - Louisa May Alcott

108. “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain

109. “She pronounced the word married as if her voice caressed it. It seemed a rustling covert leading to enchanted glades.” - Edith Wharton

110. “Don't play with others, or at one day, you will be played by others.” - Usama Ejaz

111. “Mr Pinch accordingly, after turning over the leaves of his book with as much care as if they were living and highly cherished creatures, made his own selection, and began to read.” - Charles Dickens

112. “You may only call me "Mrs. Darcy"... when you are completely, and perfectly, and incandescently happy.” - Deborah Moggach

113. “A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.” - Italo Calvino

114. “Poirot, watching him, felt suddenly a doubt--an uncomfortable twinge. Was there, here, something that he had missed? Some richness of the spirit? Sadness crept over him. Yes, he should have become acquainted with the classics. Long ago. Now, alas, it was too late....” - Agatha Christie

115. “I gather," he added, "that you've never had much time to study the classics?""That is so.""Pity. Pity. You've missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the classics, if I had my way."Poirot shrugged his shoulders."Eh bien, I have got on very well without them.""Got on! Got on? It's not a question of getting on. That's the wrong view all together. The classics aren't a ladder leading to quick success, like a modern correspondence course! It's not a man's working hours that are important--it's his leisure hours. That's the mistake we all make. Take yourself now, you're getting on, you'll be wanting to get out of things, to take things easy--what are you going to do then with your leisure hours?” - Agatha Christie

116. “Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, Teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul's bright torch as fast as it is kindled!” - Charles Dickens

117. “He felt that he was himself and did not wish to be anyone else. He only wished now to be better than he had been formerly” - Leo Tolstoy

118. “Read the great books, gentlemen,” Mr. Monte said one day. “Just the great ones. Ignore the others. There’s not enough time.” - Pat Conroy

119. “Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet scarcely bigger than himself and who had need for a friend.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

120. “Ask not the elves for advice, because they will tell you both 'yes' and 'no'.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

121. “By the Angel, it just crushed Sophocles," noted Will. "Has no one respect for the classics these days?” - Cassandra Clare

122. “I'm not Meg tonight, I'm a 'doll'.” - Louisa May Alcott

123. “A great nose may be an indexOf a great soul” - Edmond Rostand

124. “There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in the train, their silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces, scourged by time and trouble, having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance in such a jaunty situation. In a true view, perhaps, there was more to be gathered and told of each anxious and experienced one, to whom the years were drawing nigh when she should say, 'I have no pleasure in them', than of her juvenile comrades. But let the elder be passed over here for those under whose bodices the life throbbed quick and warm.” - Thomas Hardy

125. “I had been tricked once by that Cheat called love, but the Game was over...” - Daniel Defoe

126. “The classics can console. But not enough.” - Derek Walcott