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Favorite Quotes

Idun said:
"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
J. R. R. Tolkien, LOTR
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I know I am 6 months late in replying to this particular posting, but I just saw this thread today.

This quote from LotR has meant very much to me, ever since I read the books for the first time more than 20 years ago.

I have been against death penalty all my adult life, and in my humble opinion Tolkien presents us with the best argument, there is, against the death penalty.

Hobitten :)
 
hobitten said:
I know I am 6 months late in replying to this particular posting, but I just saw this thread today.
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As someone said, better late than never. ;)

[/QUOTE]This quote from LotR has meant very much to me[/QUOTE]
For me also, that's why I started this thread with this quote. I had known it long before I read the book, and I was a bit surprised when I suddenly came across it in the dialogue.
 
SillyWabbit said:
Yes, please do give his short stories book a try! They are great! Let me know what you think of them and the rest of the forward, if you try them. I really like A farewell to Arms and For Whom The Bell Tolls :)
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Well, I'm sorry to say that I have tried hard, but fail to like Hemingway. Might as well be honest. Of his forty-nine stories, I liked two. (I'm quite fussy you know, despite a certain blackbird's attempts to slander my person). I liked The Capital of the World - 'He died, as the Spanish phrase has it, full of illusions.' That struck a chord. Also, the boatwreck one, After the Storm. I don't regret reading them, but I'm not inspired to read more.
btw, if Phil_The Englishmen sees this, don't bother with all 49, just go straight to the penultimate page for the raunch ;)

Anyway, thanks for the recommendation, Wabbit, but I think I'll stick with your other favourite - Gabriel Garcia Marquez :cool:

Third Man Girl
 
Marquez rules :cool:

What is it ( out of interest ) that you don't like about Hemingway? Is it his writing style? The subjects that he writes about? Or just a case of he just is not your cup of cocca? :)

Regards
SillyWabbit
 
third man girl said:
(I'm quite fussy you know, despite a certain blackbird's attempts to slander my person).
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My apologies. I willingly and wholeheartedly retract that "shameless" bit. :)

RaVeN
 
SillyWabbit said:
What is it ( out of interest ) that you don't like about Hemingway?
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I’m not supposed to admit that I don’t like Hemingway, am I? It’s like confessing to Mile-O that I don’t understand Burns. To be honest, it just failed to excite me. I don’t get enjoyment from reading about bulls having swords thrust between their shoulders, or horses galloping, entrails flying. And the hunting, shooting, fishing thing, well . . . I don’t want to start a heated debate, but I can’t see the fun in shooting an animal. I would love to have a go at stalking one, right up to the point where you are close enough to shoot. But I wouldn’t actually shoot. Fishing too. Can’t see the point. I have a good relationship with my goldfish and I would never drag him around his tank by a hook in his mouth. ;)

I couldn’t get into the Hemingway characters, either. He gave a lot of detail and description of the men, enough that you could empathise, and stand in their shoes. But the female characters were about as exciting as pot-plants or standard lamps – just put there to serve a purpose. :(

Oh, and the dialogue. I suppose it must be dated now, but I can’t imagine people talking the way his characters talked . . . Oh, and the length of the sentences. Sometime he would give you a whole paragraph with around twelve equal-length sentences. Reading it was like marching to the beat of a drum. Not that I’ve ever marched to the beat of a drum . . .

That’s it, Wabbit! I can’t relate to it. Never been a bull-fighter, a fisherman, a waitress, a pot-plant. Or marched to the beat of a drum. Da-da-Da-da-Da-da. Da-da-Da-da-Da-da.

Enough silliness. Why did the stories mean so much to you. :)

Third Man Girl
 
third man girl said:
I’m not supposed to admit that I don’t like Hemingway, am I? It’s like confessing to Mile-O that I don’t understand Burns. To be honest, it just failed to excite me. I don’t get enjoyment from reading about bulls having swords thrust between their shoulders, or horses galloping, entrails flying. And the hunting, shooting, fishing thing, well . . . I don’t want to start a heated debate, but I can’t see the fun in shooting an animal. I would love to have a go at stalking one, right up to the point where you are close enough to shoot. But I wouldn’t actually shoot. Fishing too. Can’t see the point. I have a good relationship with my goldfish and I would never drag him around his tank by a hook in his mouth. ;)

I couldn’t get into the Hemingway characters, either. He gave a lot of detail and description of the men, enough that you could empathise, and stand in their shoes. But the female characters were about as exciting as pot-plants or standard lamps – just put there to serve a purpose. :(

Oh, and the dialogue. I suppose it must be dated now, but I can’t imagine people talking the way his characters talked . . . Oh, and the length of the sentences. Sometime he would give you a whole paragraph with around twelve equal-length sentences. Reading it was like marching to the beat of a drum. Not that I’ve ever marched to the beat of a drum . . .

That’s it, Wabbit! I can’t relate to it. Never been a bull-fighter, a fisherman, a waitress, a pot-plant. Or marched to the beat of a drum. Da-da-Da-da-Da-da. Da-da-Da-da-Da-da.

Enough silliness. Why did the stories mean so much to you. :)

Third Man Girl
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Well... :)

I can't relate to any of those things you mention. I don't wanna kill an animal and would never get pleasure from doing so. I hate fishing, dull. I have no interest in putting a hook in some poor fish mouth either. But, to me, it's his love of life and passion that shines though. For me, he really loves life and you can tell. Even when he is talking about things I don't like or relate but I can still see the passion there and the love.

For example, have you read 2 hearted river short story? I don't like fishing. The story is, on the face of it very dull, because nothing happens. The whole story is just about this guy that goes fishing. Thats it. But what about the passiona and love of life? For me, its in there! He talks about the way the sky is. The grass under his feet. How it feels after a long day to sit around a camp fire. The taste of the cofffe. The smells. The colours!

Also, for me, he writes very beautiful things. For me, his work is very beautiful. I find a lot of beauty in the way he writes. Yes, he characters can be dull. Yes, I don't relate or understand a lot of what he writes about and yes the dialogue can be strange and stilted but for all that... I think the works are really about beauty, passion and love of a life well lived.

But... I might be talking utter bollocks lol That's what I see in it, anyway :)

Regards
SillyWabbit
 
I like Hemingway, though I don't go in for all that obsessively manly stuff generally. I think his style is very pure and deceptively simple, so it's always a bit of a challenge to get to the heart of all he's saying. I like the games he plays with his reader, stringing you along, you think you've got it, and whoops! everyone in the story is completely screwed and you so didn't see it coming. HA! Not an all the time thing, but every so often, it's fun. When you're depressed, bad idea.
 
SillyWabbit said:
But, to me, it's his love of life and passion that shines though.
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Maybe if I hadn't known he shoots himself at the end of it, I would have seen it differently :( I kept finding pieces that implied he was pretty cynical about life. A lot of his characters were has-beens, and I wonder if he was frightened of becoming one himself. Or was he gay (although married) and couldn't accept it? He might have had relationships with a lot of women, but he puts more love into his male characters. Just the way I see it. *shrugs*.

Third Man Girl
 
I don't know :)

Yeah the stories are often dark and cynical but they, to me anyway, are still full of passion and a love of life. He did kill himself, true. But he only killed himself after a long-ish life doing lots of living life on the edge, writing, and travling the world. He killed himself after he had an accident that left him unable to write. Writing was his reason for being.

Regards
SillyWabbit
 
"A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom." (R. Frost)

My previous signature...I've changed it recently, so I'm putting it here.
 
weird of me that just want to UP this thread. :p


So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.----Brenda Ueland


And much more weird thing was that I felt a bit excited whenever I saw the name Third Man Girl. :eek:
 
ArmedJimmy said:
Its not a quote from a book but a prayer that I think about alot just now...
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Wow is this booming, I've heard this so much lately that it's getting up there with Footprints for cliche religious writings.
 
-It has become apallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity.

-Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

My signature below....
 
- The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese...

- Life is hard, especially if you are stupid
 
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