Favourite written literature, and quotations

[Bonn1827]

I invite people to submit their favourite quotes and to discuss which novels, plays, poems they most like, and why.

Here's one I find hugely amusing and my students always laughed heartily when I read it to them (with all the passion of an acted performance):

It comes from chapter 31 in "Great Expectations" (Dickens) when Pip visits Mr. Wopsle at the theatre in London when Wopsle plays Hamlet in a pathetic amateur production. This is but one of the many, many gems recounting the early scenes in the play when the ghost of Hamlet's father appears:

"The late king of the country not only appeared to have been troubled with a cough at the time of his decease, but to have taken it with him to the tomb, and to have brought it back. The royal phantom also carried a ghostly manuscript round its truncheon, to which it had the appearance of occasionally referring, and that, too, with an air of anxiety and a tendency to lose the place of reference which were suggestive of a state of mortality!"

PS: I just realized that "written literature" is a tautology. Apologies.

[Tillyvalle]

Not sure if this counts as it's a quote from a film but I love it. Taken from the wonderful Ealing comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets in which the brilliant Alec Guinness plays the different members of a whole family. This is him portraying the pompous old vicar, who as a second son, had to make the church his career. (Showing someone round his church) "My West window has all the exuberance of Chaucer with happily none of the concommitent crudities of the period." (of course it's better to hear him say it!)

[Peter]

Not sure if this counts as it's a quote from a film but I love it. Taken from the wonderful Ealing comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets in which the brilliant Alec Guinness plays the different members of a whole family. This is him portraying the pompous old vicar, who as a second son, had to make the church his career. (Showing someone round his church) "My West window has all the exuberance of Chaucer with happily none of the concommitent crudities of the period." (of course it's better to hear him say it!)

And what an excellent film that was - a tour de Force from Alec Guinness and Dennis Price. I love the ending when he is released from jail and asked about his memoirs which he has left behind in his cell detailing all his crimes!!

[Peter]

Tolstoy and Dickens are my two favourite authors - although Anna Karenina is probably the finer, I prefer War and Peace I suppose because of the historical context and Pierre Bezukhov is such a character you can warm to. I've seen the film in two versions - the Russian one is the best, but the DVD quality is terrible, especially the subtitles.

Again not Dickens' finest novel but I love a Tale of two cities for its incredible descriptions of the Terror during the French Revolution.

[Bonn1827]

What great selections! And, yes, PLEASE do discuss films! You're obviously people of good taste!! I'm enjoying reading these!

Talk about scenes from films too - not just dialogue - if you like. I'll throw my thoughts in first, and please feel free to comment:

"The Best Years of Our Lives" (Wyler, 1946)

Homer (real life double amputee Harold Russell) has hooks for hands, as his were burned during a naval attack. He goes home after the war to Wilma, his childhood sweetheart who lives next door. He stands on the footpath unable to put his arms around her because of the hooks. The looks on both his and Wilma's face, his parents and sister and the departing Dana Andrews and Fredrick March defy words. This is what cinema is all about!!

[Peter]

I really like Historical novels most - Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is superb. Manzoni's 'The betrothed', Lampedusa's 'The Leopard' and Stendhal's 'The Red and the Black' are also favourites of mine. Thomas Mann's short Novellas and rare for him a comedy in the unfinished Confessions of Felix Krull which is very funny!

[Bonn1827]

My sister is a retired French teacher and always maintained Hugo was the greatest storyteller in literature!! Your list looks like a good one, Peter!

I love this little extract from Dickens' "Dombey and Son" -

"Dom-bey and Son. Those three words conveyed the one idea in Mr. Dombey's life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, the sun and moon were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in their orbits, to preserve inviolate a system of which they were the centre. Common abbreviations took new meanings in his eyes, and had sole reference to them. A.D. had no concern with anno Domini, but stood for anno Dombei - and Son".

BRILLIANT (and musical).

[susanwen]

My favorite author is Patrick O'Brian, and I love this little gem:

"Other people's marriages are a perpetual source of amazement."

And here's one that he wrote about music:

"A foolish German had said that man thought in words. It was totally false; a pernicious doctrine; the thought flashed into being in a hundred simultaneous forms, with a thousand associations, and the speaking mind selected one, forming it grossly into the inadequate symbols of words, inadequate becaue common to disparate situations - admitted to be inadequate for vast regions of expression, since for them there were the parallel languages of music and painting. Words were not called for in many or indeed most forms of thought: Mozart certainly thought in terms of music."

[Bonn1827]

Great, Susanwen. Yes, sometimes language is inadequate as a means of communication isn't it? This is where film comes into its own - when the picture paints a thousand words.

[Tillyvalle]

My favourite play of all time is Robert Bolt's A Man for all Seasons. Favourite quote, "When a statesman forsakes his own private conscience for the sake of his public duties, he leads his country on a short route to chaos." So true.

[Preston]

Speaking of Hugo, just the other night I watched the 1939 movie, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", and I loved it. I thought that for the time period they put a lot of honest effort into making the movie.

Has anyone else seen this movie?

I am guessing the character Quasimodo was created based on a disease of the face called Proteus Syndrome or either neurofibromatosis?

Such a sick world we live in, when people laugh and mock their own fellow man for not being similar to them. This is quite common. People get involved in groups or what I would call long term clicks, and most things not within the groups are shunned almost unconsciously by the group/click.

[Preston]

Yes, I finally have changed my signature. The reason I bring it up is because, well one I had the Beethoven quote for a long time.

Two, and more importantly to do with the thread, it is one of my favorite quotes from The Dhammapada. In the Dhammapada almost every verse is like an unbelievably spiritual quote!

[Michael]

Tolstoy and Dickens are my two favourite authors - although Anna Karenina is probably the finer, I prefer War and Peace I suppose because of the historical context and Pierre Bezukhov is such a character you can warm to. I've seen the film in two versions - the Russian one is the best, but the DVD quality is terrible, especially the subtitles.

.

You should get the BBC 1972 twenty- episode version of "War and Peace" - the finest adaptation I have come across (well- there are only three that I know of). The boxset is quite reasonably priced and it has a magnificent cast. Anthony Hopkins plays Pierre - his first major role - for which he won a BAFTA. The large battle scenes are convincing enough for the small screen (if not quite on the Hollywood scale) but the whole magnificent story is given room to breathe.
I read "War and Peace" for the third time about ten years ago, so it's about due for another read.
Anthony Hopkins also played "Quasimodo" in another television epic of the seventies and was due to play Beethoven but that last deal fell through. A pity really, because Hopkins is a talented pianist and composer in his own right. Instead, we got Hannibal Lecter.

[Sorrano]

I've been reading through these novels, too, and enjoying them a lot. (Have you tried these, Peter? They are well done for historical novels.)

My favorite author is Patrick O'Brian, and I love this little gem:

"Other people's marriages are a perpetual source of amazement."

And here's one that he wrote about music:

"A foolish German had said that man thought in words. It was totally false; a pernicious doctrine; the thought flashed into being in a hundred simultaneous forms, with a thousand associations, and the speaking mind selected one, forming it grossly into the inadequate symbols of words, inadequate becaue common to disparate situations - admitted to be inadequate for vast regions of expression, since for them there were the parallel languages of music and painting. Words were not called for in many or indeed most forms of thought: Mozart certainly thought in terms of music."

[Peter]

You should get the BBC 1972 twenty- episode version of "War and Peace" - the finest adaptation I have come across (well- there are only three that I know of). The boxset is quite reasonably priced and it has a magnificent cast. Anthony Hopkins plays Pierre - his first major role - for which he won a BAFTA. The large battle scenes are convincing enough for the small screen (if not quite on the Hollywood scale) but the whole magnificent story is given room to breathe.
I read "War and Peace" for the third time about ten years ago, so it's about due for another read.
Anthony Hopkins also played "Quasimodo" in another television epic of the seventies and was due to play Beethoven but that last deal fell through. A pity really, because Hopkins is a talented pianist and composer in his own right. Instead, we got Hannibal Lecter.

I have the BBC series Michael and it is ok if a little wooden. The Russian film is an epic with extraordinary battle scenes, terrific directing (Sergei Bondarchuk) and generally fine acting but of course those dreadful subtitles!

Anthony Hopkins missed out again with the recent film about Tolstoy, 'The last station' as he was originally cast to play the lead role instead of Christopher Plummer. Anyone seen the film and any opinions?