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Classic Literature Quotes

@blueskylibrary.bsky.social
180 followers 59 following 123 posts

The quotes span nearly 5,000 years from ancient Egypt to present day, mostly from notable literary and historical voices, but also from popular culture, science, psychology, religion, and politics. You will find quotes for all occasions.

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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
“We are what we think, having become what we thought.” –The Pali Canon (c. 500–c. 250 B.C.). Ten Twin Verses, no. 1
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
“I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.” –William Shakespeare (1564-1616), A Midsummer Night's Dream [1595-1596]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.” –Paulo Coelho (1944- ), The Alchemist [1988]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
Who ran to help me when I fell, And would some pretty story tell, Or kiss the place to make it well? My Mother. –Ann Taylor (1782-1866), My Mother [1816]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” –Stanislaw Lec (1909-1966), More Unkempt Thoughts [1968]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
“I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.” –Khaled Hosseini (1965- ), And the Mountains Echoed [2013]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not. –Dr. Seuss (1904-1991), The Lorax [1971]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” –Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Lady Windermere’s Fan [1892]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
“With my pencil, I wrote myself into being.” –Percival Everett (1956- ), James [2024]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
"what is only half-jokingly known as the Butterfly Effect—the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York." –James Gleick (1954- ), Chaos [1987]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.” –Carl Jung (1875-1961), Memories, Dreams, Reflections [1962]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
I am what I am I am made like that. -Jacques Prévert (1900-1977), Paroles [1945]. Je Suis Comme Je Suis
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
“A daydreamer is prepared for most things.” –Joyce Carol Oates (1938- ), The Wheel of Love [1970]. Accomplished Desires
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
“Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so.” –Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), The Old Man and the Sea [1952]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
"I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.” –John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969), A Confederacy of Dunces [1980]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
[The tramp character:] "A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure." –Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), My Autobiography [1964]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
“everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” –Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), Man's Search for Meaning [1946]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
They change their skies above them, But not their hearts that roam. –Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), The Native-Born [1895]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
Change proves true on the day it is finished. –I Ching (Twelfth century B.C.), No. 49 (translation by Thomas Cleary)
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
"I looked at my life, and it was also a river." –Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), Siddhartha [1922]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow! [Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero] –Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65 BC-8 BC), Odes [23 BC]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” –Mary Shelley (1797-1851), Frankenstein [1818]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
The best way out is always through. –Robert Frost (1874-1963), A Servant to Servants (1915)
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? –Mary Oliver (1935-2019), The Summer Day [1990]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
When you wish upon a star, Makes no difference who you are, Anything your heart desires will come to you. –Ned Washington (1901-1976), Pinocchio [1940]. When You Wish Upon a Star
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
“A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living.” –Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), The Death of the Moth, and Other Essays [1974]. The Humane Art
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." –Franz Kafka (1883-1924), The Metamorphosis [1915]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” –Roald Dahl (1916-1990), The Minpins [1991]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. –T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), The Waste Land [1922]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
"I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free." –Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Bleak House [1853]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
“We are all born mad. Some remain so.” –Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Waiting for Godot [1952]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
“If you look at a dog following the advice of his nose, he traverses a patch of land in a completely unplottable manner. And he invariably finds what he’s looking for.” –W. G. Sebald (1944-2001), Interview with Joseph Cuomo, Queens College [March 13, 2001]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
I to the world am like a drop of water, That in the ocean seeks another drop –William Shakespeare (1564-1616), The Comedy of Errors [1592-1594]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
"If we assume that the last breath of, say, Julius Caesar has by now become thoroughly scattered through the atmosphere, then the chances are that each of us inhales one molecule of it with every breath we take." –James Jeans (1877-1946), An Introduction to the Kinetic Theory of Gases [1940]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
"The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult." –Madame Du Deffand (1697-1780), Letter to Jean Le Rond d’Alembert [July 7, 1763] [On the legend that St. Denis, carrying his own head, walked two leagues]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant. –Joan Didion (1934- ), The Year of Magical Thinking [2005]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
“The imaginary is what tends to become real.” –André Breton (1896-1966), The White-Haired Revolver [1932]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
"Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive." –Josephine Hart (1942-2011), Damage [1991]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
"Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." –Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), Address Delivered at the Eleventh Annual SCLC Convention [August 16, 1967]. Where Do We Go From Here?
Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us the courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. 

Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Let us realize that William Cullen Bryant is right: "Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again." Let us go out realizing that the Bible is right: "Be not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." This is our hope for the future, and with this faith we will be able to sing in some not too distant tomorrow, with a cosmic past tense, "We have overcome! We have overcome! Deep in my heart, I did believe we would overcome."

Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
"Either get busy living or get busy dying." –Stephen King (1947- ), Different Seasons [1982]. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
“I don’t want realism. I want magic!” –Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), A Streetcar Named Desire [1947]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.” –Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), Madame Bovary [1856]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
"When I discover who I am, I'll be free." –Ralph Ellison (1913-1994), Invisible Man [1947]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
What a shame that I’m not a fortune teller. I would tell fortunes only with flowers and I would heal the earth’s wounds with a rainbow. –Nika Turbina (1974-2002), First Draft [1984]. Telling Fortunes
What a shame that
I’m not a fortune teller.
I would tell fortunes
only with flowers
and I would heal
the earth’s wounds
with a rainbow.

–Nika Turbina
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
“I don’t like work—no man does—but I like what is in work—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other man can ever know.” –Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Heart of Darkness [1902]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” –Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Lady Windermere’s Fan [1892]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” –Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Worstward Ho [1983]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
What Parallel can be— Of the Significance of This— To Universe—and Me? –Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), No. 515 No Crowd that has Occurred
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” –Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), Through the Looking-Glass [1871]
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Classic Literature Quotes @blueskylibrary.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
“I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly. “She'll see." –F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), The Great Gatsby [1925]
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