The Death of Nisus and Euryalus . Aeneid IX. 590+

1. Then, pierced, he cast himself upon his lifelessfriend; there, at last, he found his rest in death.Fortunate pair! If there by any powerwithin my poetry, no day shall ever erase you from the memory of time…. The Death of Nisus and Euryalus. Aeneid IX. 590+

2. …the agreeable manner in which he immediately fell into conversation, though it was only on its being a wet night and on the probability of rainy season, made her feel that the commonest, dullest, and most threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill of the speaker. Pride and Prejudice, Lizzy on Wickham, 57

3. In this connexion I sometimes wonder whether it can be right for a prudent theologian, philosopher, or other such person of precise and delicate conscience to write history. How can they pledge their word on a popular belief? How can they answer for the thoughts of unknown persons? Montaigne, On the Power of the Imagination, 47

4. Whatever I have done was done of set purpose, for I wished to show you how to be a wife, to teach these people how to choose and keep a wife, and to guarantee my own peace and quiet as long as we were living beneath the same roof. Decameron, X.X Gualtieri to Griselda, 793

5. Ulysses, in whose persons and hardships Homer painted a living portrait of prudence and forbearance; Virgil, too, in the person of Aeneas, portrayed the valor of the devoted son…they were depicted not as they were, but as they should have been, to serve as examples of virtue to men who came after them. Don Quixote, DQ to Sancho, 193

6. And as she looked at him she began to smile, for though she had not said a word, he knew, of course he knew, that she loved him. He could not deny it. And smiling she looked out of the window and said (thinking to herself, Nothing on earth can equal this happiness)— To the Lighthouse, Mr. + Mrs. Ramsay, 124

7. If man in fact is not a scoundrel—in general, that is, the whole human race—then the rest is all mere prejudice, instilled fear, and there are not barriers, and that’s just how it should be!... Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov to himself, 27

8. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table ona roar? Not one now, to mock your grinning? Hamlet, Hamlet on Yoric, 5.1.188+

9. I’ve kept close track, to snatch his scalp; one can’t absolve a man who’s not repented, and no one can repent and will at once; the law of contradiction won’t allow it. Inferno, XXVII.117-121. (Bertran, father v. son)

10. For wherever the human soul turns itself, other than to you, it is fixed in sorrows, even if it is fixed upon beautiful things, which would nevertheless mean nothing if they did not have their being from you. The Confessions, IV.15. (p.61)

11. We could go away and stay together on one of our various country estates, shunning at all costs the lewd practices of our fellow citizens and feasting and merry-making as best we may without in anyway over-stepping the bounds of what is reasonable. Decameron, Prologue

12. I shall help you with my wealth.And should you want to settle this kingdomon equal terms with me, then all the cityI am building now is yours. Dido to Aeneas, The Aeneid, 804-808.

13. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned; Till this moment I never knew myself! Pride and Prejudice, Lizzy, 156

14. Lying is man’s only privilege over all other organisms. If you lie—you get to the truth! Lying is what makes me a man! Crime and Punishment, Razumikhin, 202

15. She sensed that he had changed somehow. She had never read a line of his poetry. She thought that she knew how it went though, slowly and sonorously. It was seasoned and mellow. It was about the desert and the camel. It was about the palm tree and the sunset. It was extremely impersonal; it said something about death; it said very little about love. To the Lighthouse, Lily on Carmichael, 195

16. Here was the company of those who sufferedwounds, fighting for their homeland, and of thosewho, while they lived their lives, served as pure priests;and then the pious poets, those whose songswere worthy of apollo, those who had made life more civilized with newfound arts… The Underworld, Aeneid, VI. 872-877

17. …madness is so to speak, a logical error, an error of judgment, a mistaken view of things. He would gradually prove his patient wrong, and imagine, they say he achieved results! Crime and Punishment, Lebezyatnikov to Rask, 424

18. To make conversation, to share a joke, to perform mutual acts of kindness, to read together well-written books, to share in trifling and serious matters, to disagree without animosity—just as a person debates with himself—and in the very rarity of disagreement to find the salt of normal harmony, to teach each other something or to learn from one another…This is what we love in friends. The Confessions, IV.13 (p.60)

19. Human beings obtain normal pleasures of human life not as they come on unexpectedly and against our will, but after discomforts which are planned and accepted by deliberate choice. The Confessions, VIII.7. (p.138)

20. But here begins a new account, the account of man’s gradual renewal, the account of his gradual regeneration, his gradual transition from one world to another, his acquaintance with a new, hitherto completely unknown reality. Crime and Punishment, the end, 551

21. Step by step we climbed beyond all corporeal objects and the heaven itself, where sun, moon, and stars shed light on the earth. We ascended even further by internal reflection and dialogue and wonder at your works, and we entered into our own minds. We moved up beyond them so as to attain the region of inexhaustible abundance where you feed israelenternally with truth for food. The Confessions, IX.24. (p.171)

22. When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, Or in th’inscestuous pleasure of his bed,At game, a-swearing, or about some actThat has no relish of salvation in’t— Hamlet, Hamlet at Claudius’s confession, 3.4.89+

23. This is his decision:To go out and explore this foreign country,to learn what shores the wind has brought him to,who lives upon this land—it is untilled—are they wild beasts or men—and then to tell hiscomrades what he has found. Aeneas, The Aeneid, I.433-436

24. He rose at once. “I was not bowing to you, I was bowing to all human suffering,” he uttered somehow wildly, and walked to the window. Crime and Punishment, Rask to Sonya, 321

25. Mother and child then—objects of universal veneration, and in this case the mother was famous for her beauty—might be reduced, he pondered, to a purple shadow without irreverence. To the Lighthouse, Bankes on Lily’s painting, p. 52

26. O you possessed of sturdy intellects, observe the teaching that is hidden here beneath the veil of verses so obscure. Purgatorio, IX.61-64. (Dante to the Reader)

27. And let your comrades, too, keep fast this practiceof sacrifice, yourself maintain the custom;and may your pious sons continue it. Helenus, channeling Apollo, Aeneid III. 530-533

28. The greatest madness a man can commit in this life is to let himself die, just like that, without anybody killing him or any other hands ending his life except those of melancholy. Don Quixote, Sancho to Alonso Quexana, 937

29. Because I severed those so joined, I carry—alas—my brain dissevered from its source, which is within my trunk. And thus in me one sees the law of counter-penalty. Inferno, XXVIII.139-142.

30. The body obeyed the slightest inclination of the soul to move the limbs at its pleasure more easily than the soul obeyed itself, which its supreme desire could be achieved exclusively by the will alone. The Confessions, VIII.20. (p.147)

31. But to perseverIn obstinate condolement is a courseof impious stubbornness. ‘Tis unmanly grief.It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,An understanding simple and unschooled. Hamlet Act I, Claudius on Hamlet

32. How superior are the fables of the masters of literature to these deceptive traps!...Verses and poetry I can transform into real nourishment. The Confessions, III.11. (p.42)

33. Our indiscretion sometime serves us wellWhen our deep plots do pall, and it should learn usThere’s divinity that shapes our ends… Hamlet, H to Horatio, 5.2.8, Hamlet on Yoric, 5.1.188+

34. You all say heaven made me beautiful, so much that this beauty of mine, with a force you can’t resist, makes you love me; and you say and even demand that, in return for the love you show me, I must love you…but I can’t see why, for this reason alone, a woman who’s loved for her beauty should be obliged to love whoever loves her. Don Quixote, Marcela on Grisistomo’s suicide

35. His immense self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured and spread itself in pools at her feet, and all she did, miserable sinner that she was, was to draw her skirts a little closer round her ankles, lest they should get wet. To the Lighthouse, Lily + Mr. Ramsay, 152

36. I am, you know, a bachelor, an unworldly and unknowing man, and, moreover, a finished man, a frozen man, sir, gone to seed… Crime and Punishment, Porfiry to Rask. 336

37. It is not love of praiseor fame has left me, drive off by fear,but that my blood is chilled and dulled by slowold age, my body’s force is numb, is coldIf I could only have what once was mine,the youth of which that shameless fellow thereso confidently brags, I should have boxed, not because of praise or handsome bullockhad tempted me; I do not need rewards! Entulles to Aeneas, Aeneid, V.525-530

38. And if it were not because I imagine…did I say imagine?...because I know for a fact that all these discomforts are an integral part of the practice of arms, I would let myself die here out of sheer annoyance. Don Quixote, DQ to Sancho, 106

39. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? To the Lighthouse, Lily at the End, 208

40. At that point—I would have you see—the forceTo which one yielded mingles with one’s will;And no excuse can pardon their joint act.Absolute will does not concur with wrong;But the contingent will, through fear that its Resistance might bring greater harm, consents. Paradiso, IV.105+, Beatrice to Dante, 35-36

41. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by awkward taste. Pride and Prejudice, Lizzy on Pemberly

42. But you no longer believe your own theory—what would you run away on? And what would you do to be a fugitive? It’s nasty and hard to be a fugitive… Crime and Punishment, Porfiry to Rask, 461

43. Indeed one would do better to love this visible sun, which at least is evident to the eyes, than to those false mythologies which use the eyes to deceive the mind. The Confessions, III.10. (p.41)

44. The man who knows how to enjoy his existence as he ought has attained an absolute perfection like that of the gods. Montaigne, On Experience, 496

45. The eager men of Tyre work steadily:some build the city walls or citadel—they roll up stones by hand, and some select the place for a new dwelling, marking out its limits with a furrow; some make laws, establish judges and a sacred senate;some excavate a harbor; others laythe deep foundations for a theatre,hewing tremendous pillars from the rocks,high decorations for a stage to come. Carthage. The Aeneid. I.605-611

46. The Aeneid History Inheritance Piety The Afterlife Unruly emotion Futurity Sacrifice Custom Glory of State Fate

47. The Confessions Biography Experience Desire Transgression Memory Memory Transcendence Disillusionment Logic v. Faith Interpretation

48. The Divine Comedy Contrapasso Redemption Art Penance Journey Transcendence Dogma Limits of Intellect Interpretation Humility

49. The Decameron Education Sex Gender Wit Story-telling Relativism Transgression Escape Interpretation Hypocrisy

50. The Essays Biography Experimentation Experience The Body History Self-Reliance Moderation Interpretation Relativism Subjectivity