Favorite Literary Sentences

[WIPartridge]

I have a couple of favorites - sorry they're a touch lengthy.

With any other commander which the Army of the Potomac had ever had, that first hour's fighting would have ended all offensive operations for the day - for it had suffered in that time nearly as heavy casualties as Burnside or Hooker had suffered in their whole campaigns at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.  But Grant was of a different temper.

- Gen. E.P. Alexander commenting on the Battle of Cold Harbor

Everything is the way it was, he'd tell Doc.  The past never changes.  You leave it and go on to the present, but it is still there, waiting for you to come back to it.

- Corey Ford

[Tony Moore]

all cats are tigers in their own garden.. chinese proverb

the dogs bark in the night, and the caravan moves on. Kayham

the greatest truth is always the one no one will mention.. unknown

all that glisters is not gold.  W Shakespeare.

the pursuit of the inedible by the unspeakable.  Wilde.

[Tony Moore]

yes madam I am drunk, and you are ugly, tomorrow I may be

sober, but you will still be ugly.. Churchil.

[bkelble]

I

Corey Ford

from The Road to Tinkhamtown

"Steady," he called, "steady boy." He Started across the bridge. "I'm coming"

Gene Hill "Snow"

I hope you read this while it is snowing.

Emerson "Nature"

Standing on the bare ground-my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted to infinite space- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a Transparent eyeball: I am nothing: I see all: the currents of the universal being circulate through me: I am part and parcel of God.

Thoreau Walden

It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and we make a beaten track for ourselves.

[Tom Avent]

Man... you guys are smart. I'm lucky to remember my name when I wake up in the morning. I gues I would also have to learn to read.

[Fin2Feather]

"Can you read music?"

"Not enough to hurt my playin'."

             - Pete Seeger

[Crayborn]

"Although they couldn't talk in my terms, they had a language of their own that was easy to understand. Sometimes I would see the answer in their eyes, and again it would be in the friendly wagging of their tails. Other times I could hear the answer in a low whine or feel it in the soft caress of a warm flicking tongue. In some way, they would always answer."

- Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows

[Ben Hong]

yes madam I am drunk, and you are ugly, tomorrow I may be

sober, but you will still be ugly.. Churchil.

Such delicious wit and repartee is a long gone art, especially in politics. The object of Winston's barb was Lady Astor, an opposition member of the British Parliament with whom he had a long but stormy *ahem* relationship in Parliament.

In one memorable set-to whilst in formal debate, the Lady Astor rose in Parliament to hurl this missive: "Sir, if you were my husband, I would serve you hemlock".

Churchill's instantaneous riposte was; "Ma'am, if I were your husband, I would drink it".

[ccavacini]

If you see two people talking and one looks bored...he's the other one.

[Guest]

"A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man — the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant."

- G. K. Chesterton

"No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices."

- Edward R. Murrow