Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Top Ten Favorite Book Quotes



10. Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince




9. "...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet




8. "We used to all come outside when the streetlights came on and prowl the neighborhood in a pack, a herd of kids on banana-seat bikes and minibikes. The grown-ups looked so silly framed in their living-room and kitchen windows. They complained about their days and signed deep sighs of depression and loss. They talked about how spoiled and lucky children were these days. We will never be that way, we said, we will never say those things."
Jill McCorkle, Creatures of Habit









7. "Listen to your broccoli and it will tell you how to eat it."
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird


                                                                                                                               
                                                                        





6. "Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland




5. "Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day" from
The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays







3. "As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans."         
                                                                                        Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
4. "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for all of Paris is a moveable feast."
                                                                                        Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
2. "This inner peace of mind occurs on three levels of understanding. Physical quietness seems the easiest to achieve, although there are levels and levels of this too....Mental quietness, in which one has no wandering thoughts at all, seems more difficult, but can be achieved. But value quietness, in which one has no wandering desires at all but simply performs the acts of his life without desire, that seems the hardest."
Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

1. "The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there."
Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance



Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers answers. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND sign Mister Linky at the bottom to share with us and all those who are participating. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time..just post what you can!

19 comments:

  1. I wish I had started writing down favorite quotes a lot earlier in life.

    Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has been on my TBR list forever. I think it is time that I finally dust it off and start reading it.

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  2. DON'T DO IT, MOLLY! Please, I urge you, put the book down and walk away from it. Let it gather dust.

    I read ZAMM in 1975. I've always named it as my favorite read. I've recommended it to tens, hundreds, thousands of people.

    Not one has liked it. Not one has come back to me and said, "Debbie, I loved that book!"

    Zero.

    I think, for me, it was a case of Right Book, Right Time.

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  3. I loved the first quote!

    lol I always planned on reading ZAMM eventually, but now maybe not :p

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  4. Not sure why I can't recall the Lamott quote. I've read the book multiple times.

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  5. Fantastic list. You've made me want to reread A Moveable Feast. Thanks for included thing covers as well.

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  6. I absolutely love the broccoli quote! The others are good too of course, but evidently my sense of humor is tending toward "off the wall" this morning.

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  7. That Alice in Wonderland one's a great quote! :D

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  8. You have some wonderful quotes on here! Love the Alice in Wonderland one! I still need to read The Little Prince..it's one of the few books my boyfriend has actually read! He had to read it in French for his high school class.

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  9. Love your list--especially Rilke. Wonderful poet...and great advice in this quote. Here's my list: http://myreadersblock.blogspot.com/2010/09/top-ten-tuesday_21.html

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  10. The quote from The Little Prince really jumped out at my when I read the book too--it's a great one!

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  11. Great quotes! Love the Alice in Wonderland one :)

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  12. I haven't read most of the books on your list, but the quotes made me smile. I love the Alice in Wonderland one as well! (seems to be popular)

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  13. Love your quotes from The Little Prince and Alice in Wonderland. Two wonderful books!

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  14. I just love Bird by Bird so much. Anne is amazing. And The Little Prince. Great quotes all!

    I always wanted to pick up ZAMM!

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  15. love Anne Lamott.

    zen I liked much more as a 20 year old then as a 40+ year old

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  16. I had always meant to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance too. Finally, last month, my book club read this famous book. I found it to be difficult to read, but there was still much about it that I liked. Many members of my club did NOT like it very much - one even compared reading it to "mild torture ." When we met, though, we were fortunate in that one of our members was pretty familiar with the book and acted as our "guide," helping us understand the book. It actually turned out to be one of the better discussions we've had. I for one am glad that I finally filled this gap in my 'cultural literacy' :-)

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  17. I must tell you, bibliophilica, that I am delighted to hear this. I read it in 1975 and it changed the way I saw life. I've offered it up to lots of others and no one, not even one person, has enjoyed it. Most did not even finish it!

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  18. The Ideal Library Symbolizes Everything a Society stands for. A Society Depends On Its Libraries To Know Who it Is, Because Libraries Are Societies Memory - Alberto Manguel.

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