Sentence Collection
The Odyssey, Homer
From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes,
but they themselves, with their own reckless ways,
compound their pains beyond their proper share.
---Book I, lines 38-40
"Greetings, stranger!
Here in our house you'll find a royal welcome,
Have supper first, then tell us what you need."
---Book I, lines 144-146
But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods
can defend a man, not even one they love, that day
when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.
---Book III, lines 269-271
"Help yourselves to food, and welcome! Once you've dined
we'll ask you who you are.
---Book IV, lines 68-69
Nothing could have parted us,
bound by love for each other, mutual delight...
till death's dark cloud came shrouding round us both.
---Book IV, lines 198-200
"About that man," the shadowy phantom answered,
"I cannot tell you the story start to finish,
whether he's dead or alive.
It's wrong to lead you on with idle words."
---Book IV, lines 139-142
Immortals are never strangers to each other,
no matter how distant one may make her home.
But as for great Odysseus --
Hermes could not find him within the cave.
Off he sat on a headland, weeping there as always,
wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish,
gazing out over the barren sea through blinding tears.
---Book V, lines 89-95
weeping, his eyes never dry, his sweet life flowing away
with the tears he wept for his foiled journey home.
---Book V, lines 68-69
No finer, greater gift in the world than that...
when man and woman possess their home, two minds,
two hearts and that work as one.
---Book VI, lines 200-202
The men here never suffer strangers gladly,
have no love for hosting a man from foreign lands.
All they trust are their fast, flying ships
that cross the mighty ocean.
---Book VII, lines 36-40
Be bold, nothing to fear.
In every venture the bold man comes off best.
---Book VII, lines 58-59
Suspicious we are, we men who walk the earth.
---Book VII, line 352
Balance is best in all things.
---Book VII, line 355
At once alert Odysseus carved a strip of loin,
rich and crisp with fat, from the white-tusked boar
that still had much meat left, and called the herald over:
"Here, herald, take this choice cut to Demodocus
so he can eat his fill -- with warm regards from a man who knows what suffering is...
From all who walk the earth our bards deserve
esteem and awe, for the Muse herself has taught them
paths of song. She loves the breed of harpers."
---Book VIII, lines 532-540
That is the gods' work, spinning threads of death
through the lives of mortal men,
and all to make a song for those to come...
---Book VIII, lines 649-651
'But since we've chanced on you, we're at your knees
in hopes of a warm welcome, even a guest-gift,
the sort that hosts give strangers. That's the custum.
Respect the gods, my friend. We're suppliants -- at your mercy!
Zeus of the Strangers guards all guests and suppliants:
strangers are sacred -- Zeus will avenge their rights!'
---Book IX, lines 301-305
They burst into cries, wailing, streaming live tears
that gained us nothing -- what good can come of grief?
---Book X, lines 220-221
my heart a heaving storm at every step
---Book X, line 345
'No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!
By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man --
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive --
that rule down here over all the breathless dead.
---Book VI, lines 555-558
Our lives are much too brief...
If a man is cruel by nature, cruel in action,
the mortal world will call down curses on his head
while he is alive and all will mock his memory after death.
But then if a man is kind by nature, kind in action,
his guests will carry his fame across the earth
and people will praise him from the heart.
---Book 19, 377-383
Still, better be dead
than live on here, never winning the prize
that tempts us all -- forever in pursuit,
burning with expectation every day.
---Book 21, lines 175-178
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers.
...it was staring out at them, at the doctors, like a thousand writhing worms under a rock, swarming, shimmering, wet and oily -- Good God! -- or maybe not like worms but like a million little podules each a tiny city of cancer, each with an unruly, sprawling, environmentally careless citizenry with no zoning laws whatsoever. When the doctor opened her up, and there was suddenly light thrown upon the world of cancer-podules, they were annoyed by the disturbance, and defiant. Turn off. The fucking. Light. They glared at the doctor, each podule, though a city unto itself, having one single eye, one blind evil eye in the middle, which stared imperiously, as only a blind eye can do, out at the doctor. Go. The. Fuck. Away. The doctors did what they could, took the whole stomach out, connected what was left, this part to that, and sweed her back up, leaving the city as is, the colonists to their manifest destiny, their fossil fuels, their strip malls and suburban sprawl...
---page 4
But the family room, the only room where any of us has ever spent any time, has always been, for better or for worse, the ultimate reflection of our true inclinations. It's always been jumbled...
---page 6
I know that I should joke in the face of adversity; there is always humor, we are told. But in the last few weeks we haven't found much. We have been looking for funny things, but have found very little.
--- page 11
During the day it is often very bright outside, and though the brightness is visible from inside the family room, somehow the light does not travel effectively into the family room, in terms of bringing to the family room any noticeable illumination.
---page 13-14
We are waiting for everything to finally stop working -- the organs and systems, one by one, throwing up their hands -- The jib is up, says the endocrine; I did what I could, says the stomach, or what's left of it; We'll get em next time, adds the heart, with a friendly punch to the shoulder.
---page 17
We were embarrassed. It was all so gaudy, so gruesome -- here we were, inviting everyone to come and watch us in the middle of our disintegration.
---page 33
Every day we are collecting on what's coming to us, each day we're being paid back for what is owed, what we deserve, with interest, with some extra motherfucking consideration -- we are owed, goddammit -- and so we are expecting everything, everything.
---page 47
...and and and we have been chosen, you see, chosen, and have been given this, it being owed to us, earned by us, all of this -- the sky is blue for us, the sun makes passing cars twinkle like toys for us, the ocean undulates and churns for us, murmurs and coos to us. We are owed, see, this is ours, see.
---page 51
Am I them? They occasionally try to include me in the conversation, but it's clear they don't know what ot make of me. I look over and smile when one of them make a joke that is laughed at by all. They laugh, I chuckle -- not too much, I don't want to seem overeager, but enough to say "I hear you. I laugh with you. I share in the moment." But when the chuckling is over I am still apart, something else, and no one is sure what I am.
---page 57
The enemies list is growing quickly, unabated. All these people impeding us, trifling with us, not knowing or caring who we are, what has happened.
---page 71
People were unkind, ungiving. I had expected open arms from all, everyone grateful that we, as God's tragic envoys, had stepped down from the clouds to consider dwelling in their silly little buildings What we were getting was something eerily close to indifference.
---page 73
They are scared. They are jealous.
We are pathetic. We are stars.
We are either sad and sickly or we are glamorous and new. We walk in and the choices race through my head. Sad and sickly? Or glamorous and new? Sad/sickly or glamorous/new? Sad/sickly? Glamorous/new?
We are unusual and tragic and alive.
---page 96
I want to save everything and preserve all this but also want it all gone -- can't decide what's more romantic, preservation or decay. (Wouldn't it be something just to burn it all? Throw it all in the street? I resent having to be the one...who has to lug all this stuff from place to place...
---page 122
Oh if only something would happen. Nothing ever happens. This is all some terrible machine, where only the expected passes through.
---page 142
Every day a world-clearing sort of revolution, a bloodless one, one more interested in regeneration than any sort of destruction. Every day we start with a fresh world -- or, better yet, each day we start with this world, the one we know, and by nine, ten a.m., we've destroyed it.
---page 144
Now to diversify. We are obsessed with seeming diverse. Not in terms of actually having an incredibly diverse staff or anything -- but in terms of appearing diverse, thus when photo opportunities arise, we panic. We must look like the perfect cross section of young America! For the cameras we need three men and three women; three whites, one black, one Latino, one Asian.
---page 177
The people who think their personality is so strong, their story is so interesting, that others must know it and learn from it.
---page 201
Because I'm always watching people. When I watch people I too look through them. I learned that from my mother. To glance is not enough; eyes and brains together, acting like a flock of ravenous birds, flapping, tearing, poking...I know everything about people when I look at them for only a moment. I can tell from their clothes, their walks, their hairs and hands, I know all the bad things that they've done. I know how they've failed and how they will fail and how miserable they are.
---page 213
What am I giving you? I am giving you nothing. I am giving you things that God knows, everyone knows...I tell you and it evaporates. I don't care -- how could I care?...You have what I can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford to give you this. This does not break me. I give you virtually everything I have. i give you all of the best things I have, and while these things are things that I like, memories that I treasure, good or bad, like the pictures of my family on my walls I can show them to you without diminishing the. I can afford to give you everything...we identify our secrets our pasts and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself. But its' just the opposite, more is more is more -- more bleeding, more giving.
---page 214-215
These things, details, stories, whatever, are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see. What does he care where it is, who sees it, this snake, and his skin? He leaves it where he molts. Hours days or months later, we come across a snake's long-shed skin and we know something of the snake...Do we know where the snake is now? What the snake is thinking now? No. By now the snake could be wearing fur; the snake could be selling pencils in Hanoi. The skin is no longer his, he wore it because it grew from him, but then it dried and slipped off and he and everyone could look at it.
---page 216
I have nothing but my friends and what's left of my little family. I need community, I need feedback, I need love, connection, give-and-take -- I will bleed if they will love. Let me try. Let me prove.
---page 237
Maus, Art Spiegelman
Artie - But Pop, it's great material. It makes everything more real -- more human.
---page 23
Women in Praise of the Sacred, ed. Jane Hirshfield
I am fully qualified to work as a doorkeeper, and for this reason:
What is inside me, I don't let out;
What is outside me, I don't let in.
If someone comes in, he goes right out again --
He has nothing to do with me at all.
I am a Doorkeeper of the Heart, not a lump of wet clay.
--- Rabi'a, page 43
The way I must enter
leads through darkness to darkness --
O moon above the mountains' rim,
please shine a little further
on my path.
--- Izumi Shikibu, page 62
Beloved, what do you want of me?
I contain all that was, and that is, and shall be,
I am filled with the all.
Take of me all you please --
if you want all of myself, I'll not say no.
Tell me, beloved, what you want of me --
I am Love, who am filled with the all:
what you want,
we want, beloved --
tell us your desire nakedly.
---Marguerite Porete, page 98
In the beginning Love satisfies us.
When Love first spoke to me of love --
How I laughed at her in return!
But then she made me like the hazel trees,
Which blossom early in the season of darkness,
And bear fruit slowly.
---Love's maturity, Hadewijch of Antwerp, page 100.
The madness of love
Is a blessed fate;
And if we understood this
We would seek no other
It brings into unity
What was divide,
And this is the truth:
Bitterness it makes sweet,
It makes the stranger a neighbor,
And what was lowly it raises on high.
---The Madness of Love, Hadewijch of Antwerp, page 103
I searched for my Self
until I grew weary,
but no one, I know now,
reaches the hidden knowledge
by means of effort.
Then, absorbed in "Thou art This,"
I found the place of Wine.
There all the jars are filled,
but no one is left to drink.
--- Lal Ded, page 125
Don't let me fall
As a stone falls upon the hard ground.
And don't let my hands become dry
As the twigs of a tree
When the wind beats down the last leaves.
And when the storm raises dust from the earth
With anger and howling,
Don't let me become the last fly
Trembling terrified on a windowpane.
Don't let me fall.
I have asked for so much,
But as a blade of your grass in a distant wild field
Lets drop a seed in the lap of the earth
And dies away,
Sow in me your living breath,
As you sow a seed in the earth.
---Prayers: I, Kadya Molodowsky
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare.
Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
Four nights will quickly dream away the time.
---Act I, lines 7-8
But earthlier happy is the rose distilled
That that which, withering on the virgin thorn,
Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.
---Act I Sc I, lines 78-80
The course of true love never did run smooth.
---Act I Sc I, line 136
Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay seige to it,
Make it momentany as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say "Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up.
So quick bright things come to confusion.
---Act I Sc I, lines 143-151
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor that Love's mind of any judgment taste.
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.
And therefore is Love said to be a child
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
---Act I Sc I, lines 238-245
Your virtue is my privilege. For that
It is not night when I do see your face,
Therefore I think I am not in the night.
Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,
For you, in my respect are all the world.
Then, how can it be said I am alone
When all the world is here to look on me?
---Act II Sc I, lines 227-233
Love takes the meaning in love's conference.
I mean that my heart unto yours [is] knit,
So that but one heart we can make of it;
---Act II Sc II, lines 52-54
Arcadia, Tom Stoppard
You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.
-- Septimus (1.3.1)
It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.
-- Valentine (1.4.1)
But don’t confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need.
-- Bernard (2.5.1)
The world is going to hell in a handcart.
-- Hannah (2.5.3)
It is a defect of God’s humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.
-- Lady Croom (2.6.3)
It’s wanting to know that makes us matter.
-- Hannah (2.7.1)
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