The best lines in classical literature

Take a moment away from the book you are reading and enjoy these classical literature quotes curated by the Readplot review team.

“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.” – Moby Dick by Herman Melville

“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.” – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” – Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

“Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.” – The Sound And The Fury by William Faulkner

“I remembered everything. I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig tree and Marco’s diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon’s wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers and the Negro with his two kinds of beans and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a gray skull. Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, would numb and cover them. But they were part of me. They were my landscape.” – The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

“She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.” – Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” – Middlemarch by George Eliot

“We need never be ashamed of our tears.” – Great Expectations by Charles Dickens “He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, ‘Wait and Hope.'” – The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

“Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.” – Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” – On The Road by Jack Kerouac

“There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.” – Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning.” – The Ravenby Edgar Allan Poe

For plenty more of the classics, head over to Readplot today.