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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: One-liners from your favourite books.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
My current sig is Stephen Maturin to Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, published circa 1972.
"Wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas."
Cf. Swift - 'In the midwife's phrase - a quick conception and an easy delivery'.
And mention above of Sellars & Yeatman reminds me of the example of Horse poetry (from Horse Nonsense) - )
Come saddle my beaver and toss me my mare
Not to mention all of 'I sprang to the rollocks and Jorrocks and I...'
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...
(Dickens) Tale of Two Cities
Many other lines from that novel spring to mind, but that is one of my favourites.
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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Timothy the Obscure
Mostly Friendly
# 292
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Posted
Appleby: "But they're trying to kill everybody!"
Yossarian: "What difference does that make?"
From Catch-22, of course. Needs a little context, I guess.
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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
- C. P. Snow
Posts: 6114 | From: PDX | Registered: May 2001
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Patdys
Iron Wannabe
RooK-Annoyer
# 9397
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Posted
An ok series but the best opening sentence I have read in a long time.
It was a dark blustery afternoon in Spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried out bed of the old North Sea.
Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines.
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Marathon run. Next Dream. Australian this time.
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Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
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Posted
In Just Williams - An Autobiography Kenneth Williams quotes Peter Cook
quote:
Every morning there’s the toothpaste to be squeezed, the laces to be tied: it’s a full life.
PeteC used it as his siggy line for a while years ago.
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I give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
Fancy a break in South India?
Accessible Homestay Guesthouse in Central Kerala, contact me for details
What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?
Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
A couple more from Waugh, first the inevitable, "Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole", and,"The better sort of Ishmaelites have been Christians for many centuries, and will not publicly eat human flesh uncooked in Lent, without special and costly dispensation from their bishop", both from Scoop.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
From Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey - Maturin series;
"Jack you have debauched my slug."
From "Scoop" by Evelyn Waugh the opening to the telegram
LOVELY SPRING WEATHER BUBONIC PLAGUE RAGING
From Saki (HH Munro)
The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went.
From Mark Twain "The Innocents Abroad"
“In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, one when he was a boy and one when he was a man”
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
Terry Pratchett - Lords and Ladies
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
The line that made me a Jane Austen fan for ever:
[Darcy] really believed, that were it not for the inferiority of [Elizabeth's] connections, he should be in some danger.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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hanginginthere
Shipmate
# 17541
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Posted
Two memorable couplets:
But far more numerous was the herd of such
Who think too little and who talk too much.
Dryden: The Medal
and
For th'orisonte had refte the sunne his light;
This is as much to say as it were night.
Chaucer: The Franklin's Tale
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'Safe?' said Mr Beaver. 'Who said anything about safe? But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'
Posts: 72 | From: Eboracum | Registered: Jan 2013
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
A couple more from Waugh, first the inevitable, "Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole", and,"The better sort of Ishmaelites have been Christians for many centuries, and will not publicly eat human flesh uncooked in Lent, without special and costly dispensation from their bishop", both from Scoop.
Wonderful.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
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Posted
From an online story by Jon Kent:
quote:
Oh, he really is a bad-tempered, irascible man. On his gravestone he'll probably have the words 'Just you bugger off!'
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I give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
Fancy a break in South India?
Accessible Homestay Guesthouse in Central Kerala, contact me for details
What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?
Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Welease Woderwick:
From an online story by Jon Kent:
quote:
Oh, he really is a bad-tempered, irascible man. On his gravestone he'll probably have the words 'Just you bugger off!'
Perhaps we should place that on your own memorial stone. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
It's difficult to capture the wonderful Flora Finching in Little Dorrit in anything approaching one line -
“One more remark,' proceeded Flora.... 'I wish to make, one more explanation I wish to offer, for five days I had a cold in the head from crying which I passed entirely in the back drawing-room—there is the back drawing-room still on the first floor at the back of the house to confirm my words- "
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
I keep meaning to re-read Little Dorrit soon.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PeteC:
quote:
Originally posted by Welease Woderwick:
From an online story by Jon Kent:
quote:
Oh, he really is a bad-tempered, irascible man. On his gravestone he'll probably have the words 'Just you bugger off!'
Perhaps we should place that on your own memorial stone.
Ah but I forebore to mention who I was thinking of as I posted that.
![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif)
And from the same source [my mate ibid.]:
quote:
… but he is unconcerned, for he is yet to encounter a problem, be it ever so big or complicated, that he hasn't been able to run away from.
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I give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
Fancy a break in South India?
Accessible Homestay Guesthouse in Central Kerala, contact me for details
What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?
Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005
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S. Bacchus
Shipmate
# 17778
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Madelaine Basset! It is profound that she ends up marrying the fascist Roderick Spode. Sentimentality is indeed the partner of fascism.
And, speaking of fascism and sentimentality, it's hard to beat this bit of political analysis from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie:
quote:
Benito Mussolini is a great man. He began life as a journalist, a man of learning, an intellectual, but he is also a man of action. He has made Capri into a sanctuary for birds. A simple act of goodness.
{I must be honest and say that I don't know if that occurs in Muriel Spark's novel or only in the film adaptation}
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'It's not that simple. I won't have it to be that simple'.
Posts: 260 | Registered: Jul 2013
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by S. Bacchus:
{I must be honest and say that I don't know if that occurs in Muriel Spark's novel or only in the film adaptation}
I can't find it in the novel. I did find:
Mussolini has performed feats of magnitude and unemployment is even farther abolished under him than it was last year.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Hell isn't punishment, it's training.
Not really from a book - by Shunryu Suzuki.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Sighthound
Shipmate
# 15185
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Posted
There was a truly dreadful novel about Owen Glendower that had one saving grace; a line where a character remarked that Bolingbroke (Henry IV) had a jester because 'I guess he can't think of anything funny for himself.'
I loved that line. Still do. Always will.
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Supporter of Tia Greyhound and Lurcher Rescue.http://tiagreyhounds.org/
Posts: 168 | From: England | Registered: Sep 2009
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
Is that John Cowper Powys? I tried Wolf Solent and finished it, so now I know not to bother with his other novels.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
Mr Toots's ""If you could see my legs when I take my boots off, you would form some idea of what unrequited affection is", from Dombey And Son.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Dickens is a gold mine. I like how, in the 1860s, he already has Wildean protagonists in Eugene and Mortimer in Our Mutual Friend . As in staggering out, retching, from viewing a drowned corpse - 'Not much worse than Lady Tippins'.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Jonah the Whale
Ship's pet cetacean
# 1244
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Posted
Also from Dickens, the unpleasant schoolmaster Squeers is praised for his humane attitude to animals:
Mr Squeers, being amiably opposed to cruelty to animals, not unfrequently purchased for boy consumption the bodies of horned cattle who had died a natural death.
Posts: 2799 | From: Nether Regions | Registered: Aug 2001
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Starbug
Shipmate
# 15917
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Posted
Scout describes the long hot summers of her youth in To Kill A Mockingbird :
'Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft tea-cakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.'
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“Oh the pointing again. They're screwdrivers! What are you going to do? Assemble a cabinet at them?” ― The Day of the Doctor
Posts: 1189 | From: West of the New Forest | Registered: Sep 2010
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Sighthound
Shipmate
# 15185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Is that John Cowper Powys? I tried Wolf Solent and finished it, so now I know not to bother with his other novels.
No it was fromCry God For Glendower by, I think, Martha Rofheart.
The Cowper Powys book on Glendower is the best novel out there about the guy. Which says a lot about the dearth of novels about Glendower. Cowper Powys is hard going.
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Supporter of Tia Greyhound and Lurcher Rescue.http://tiagreyhounds.org/
Posts: 168 | From: England | Registered: Sep 2009
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Currently, having just finished "Women in Antiquity" by Charles Seltmann (mentioned in the can men be feminist thread), I am somewhat taken with this anti-church piece. (He is careful to say he is not ant-Christianity.) He writes it in a bit bridging the gap from antiquity to his 1950 present.
quote:
This new religion, like its rivals, expounded stories of miracles and a theophany with recurrent emphasis on corn, wine and blood; but, in contrast to its precursors, it was simultaneously aggressive and humble, exclusive and catholic, anthropocentric and misanthropic, pontifical and penitentiary, authoritarian and anarchic, redemptionist and comminatory, absolutionist and evangelistic, transcendential and purgatorial, sacrificial and apocalyptic.
Not that I agree, but he had fun composing it.
[ 15. September 2013, 19:00: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Huia
Shipmate
# 3473
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Posted
Wow -is the whole book like that? If so kudos for wading through it.
Huia
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Charity gives food from the table, Justice gives a place at the table.
Posts: 10382 | From: Te Wai Pounamu | Registered: Oct 2002
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
No, it was just the last chapter. I have noticed over the years a tendency for some writers to go off on one there.
Fred Hoyle, in a book on cosmology, enlivened with diagrams of universes shaped like trouser legs, spent the last chapter ranting about how the steady state theory disproved the existence of God. (Instead of continuing his argument against the Big Bang.)
A chap who wrote a book on cancer I read in my teens had a chapter about how cankers on trees could be found outside houses where people got cancer.
Someone who did a book about lost rivers in London attributed awful diseases to living over the buried rivers.
I haven't read Hawking's "Brief History of Time" but I gather he did something similar to Hoyle.
The odd thing is there is no predicting that this is going to happen until one reaches the end - though in this case, there were hints that the sustained misogyny of the Christian era was seen in contrast to the enlightened attitude to women found among the ancients. Not that sort of writing though. Overkill, I feel. Had he been in a pulpit, which seems unlikely, one could imagine him working himself up into a powerful performance, arms waving, voice rising in pitch and volume, face distorted, glaring at those in his audience he thought to be guilty of following the beliefs of the church.
[ 15. September 2013, 20:19: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
One of the chapter headings from Eco's The Name of the Rose:
quote:
In which Alinardo seems to give valuable information, and William reveals his method of arriving at a probable truth through a series of unquestionable errors.
I have always been rather fond of the concept of reaching truth through unquestionable errors.
Come to think of it, in the same chapter there is this lovely exchange when William admits that, if he had answers to his questions he would be teaching theology in Paris:
quote:
"In Paris do they always have the true answer?"
"Never," William said, "but they are very sure of their errors."
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
Posts: 2740 | From: Delaware, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hedgehog:
One of the chapter headings from Eco's The Name of the Rose:
quote:
In which Alinardo seems to give valuable information, and William reveals his method of arriving at a probable truth through a series of unquestionable errors.
"when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"
The Sign of the Four
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
quote:
Originally posted by Hedgehog:
One of the chapter headings from Eco's The Name of the Rose:
quote:
In which Alinardo seems to give valuable information, and William reveals his method of arriving at a probable truth through a series of unquestionable errors.
"when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"
The Sign of the Four
Love that line too! I am nothing if not consistent.
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
Posts: 2740 | From: Delaware, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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Cara
Shipmate
# 16966
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Posted
Austen, Pym, Dickens...all superb, and bottomless barrels of good short quotes.
Perhaps a little less well-known, though beloved among aficionados, are these opening lines:
"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea-cosy..."
from I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.
Wonderful book, much more to it than meets the eye.
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Pondering.
Posts: 898 | Registered: Feb 2012
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Earwig
Pincered Beastie
# 12057
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cara:
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.
Wonderful book, much more to it than meets the eye.
YES! It's full of good one liners, like
quote:
Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
And it also has the finest last lines of any book. I'm welling up just thinking of it.
Posts: 3120 | From: Yorkshire | Registered: Nov 2006
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
More Waugh, from the description of the filming of the Wesley biopic in Vile Bodies:-
"But did Wesley and Whitefield fight a duel?"
"Well it's not actually recorded, but it's known that they quarreled and there was only one way of settling quarrels in those days. They're both in love with Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, you see".
And later:-
.....Wesley in America was being rescued from Red Indians by Lady Huntingdon disguised as a cowboy....
[ 16. September 2013, 09:47: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Earwig:
quote:
Originally posted by Cara:
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.
Wonderful book, much more to it than meets the eye.
YES! It's full of good one liners, like
quote:
Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
And it also has the finest last lines of any book. I'm welling up just thinking of it.
I've just got out my copy and read the last half page and it really is superb. I think I'll have to put it on the stack for a full re-read soon.
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I give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
Fancy a break in South India?
Accessible Homestay Guesthouse in Central Kerala, contact me for details
What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?
Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005
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Pine Marten
Shipmate
# 11068
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
"when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"
The Sign of the Four
Ack! Whence comes this barbarism? 'Tis The Sign of Four - no 'the' ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
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Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. - Oscar Wilde
Posts: 1731 | From: Isle of Albion | Registered: Feb 2006
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by S. Bacchus:
... '"Take my camel, dear", said my aunt Dot,' ...
Thanks, S.B. - you took the words right out of my mouth. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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Lord Jestocost
Shipmate
# 12909
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Posted
"It was the day my grandmother exploded."
The opening line of The Crow Road by Iain Banks.
Posts: 761 | From: The Instrumentality of Man | Registered: Aug 2007
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
Feel slightly guilty that, amidst all these (genuinely) profound and lovely one-liners, the first one that went through my head takes the tone down considerably:
quote:
My father announced at breakfast that he is going to have a vasectomy. I pushed my sausages away untouched.
From "The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole" by Sue Townsend.
I'd like to point out I'm actually 34, not 13, as my calling this line to mind so quickly might suggest...
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
Posts: 1117 | From: Urmston, Manchester, UK | Registered: Jul 2008
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I'm still mainlining 'Ulysses'. Just two, the second one 3 sentences, so a cheat/cheap/cheep/sheep/ship ...
Me. And me now.
Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Carex
Shipmate
# 9643
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Posted
It's difficult to pick out any one line from Mark Twain because there are so many:
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
Posts: 1425 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
While on the Mark Twain theme, I'd also nominate:
"His one striking peculiarity was his . . . using big words for their own sakes, and independent of any bearing they might have upon the thought he was purposing to convey."
--Mark Twain, Roughing It
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
Posts: 2740 | From: Delaware, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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Fr Weber
Shipmate
# 13472
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Posted
"At the Name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, but Parlabane didn’t stop short at bowing; he positively cringed and crossed himself with that crumb-brushing movement which is supposed to show long custom and which he, born a Protestant of some unritualistic sect, grossly overdid."
--Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels
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"The Eucharist is not a play, and you're not Jesus."
--Sr Theresa Koernke, IHM
Posts: 2512 | From: Oakland, CA | Registered: Feb 2008
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Dubliners, Joyce.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Cara
Shipmate
# 16966
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Posted
Ah, wonderful, other lovers of I Capture the Castle.
Here's something from a book I love, though not sure how well they work if you haven't read it--the effect is slowly cumulative, so these lines gather force from all that's gone before.
"We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever -- the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass."
from the last page of A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr.
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Pondering.
Posts: 898 | Registered: Feb 2012
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Again, hardly one line, but you need the cumulative build for the full effect.
'Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans could doubt, whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes; since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementoes, and time that grows old in itself, bids us hope no long duration;--diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation.'
Sir Thomas Browne Urn Buriall
[ 17. September 2013, 18:54: Message edited by: Firenze ]
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
A two-liner by Charles Williams.
"After all, that's our direction."
"The chief use of the material world ... is that one can, just occasionally, say that with truth."
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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