418 Quotes About Classics

Of course he chanted with the rest: it was impossible to dootherwise. To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, todo what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction.

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.

He might wish and wish and never get it - the beauty and the loving in the world!

how wearisomEternity so spent in worship paidTo whom we hate. Let us not then pursueBy force impossible, by leave obtain'd Unacceptable, though in Heav'n, our stateOf splendid vassalage, but rather seekOur own good from our selves, and from our ownLive to our selves, though in this vast recess,Free, and to none accountable, preferring Hard liberty before the easie yokeOf servile Pomp

Even Tolstoy is an insignificant shadow if he takes a stroll with Anna Karenina.

Zwei Augen hat man nur und mit hundert soll man sehen

He had put on the best-looking uniform that he could, thinking that...victory deserved the best-looking armour.

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.

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.