my favorite poem is The Hangman by Maurice Ogden
Book is the great Gatsby
And quote
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

"Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me"- Martin Niem?ller

Oh my lord, so many... I guesss I will start off with one of my personal faves who i cannot remember who said it if you could help me:
"i may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend until the death, your right to say it."

"Madam, you are ugly, But in the morning, I will be sober."-Winston Churchill

"incoming fire has the right of way"-unknown

"3 people can keep a secret, if 2 are dead." -Benjamin Franklin, "Poor Richard's Almanack"

I will add so many of these later in...

Favorite poem is http://www.bartleby.com/131/7.html.

Favorite book is The Three Musketeers, but Alexandre Dumas.

Favorite quote is referenced in my sig, by John Steinbeck.

Poem - The Look of Love Alarms by William Blake
Book - Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami although I regularly re-read Angels Flight by Michael Connelly
Quote - "Nuts!" General Anthony McAuliffe response to the Nazi demand for surrender during the seige of Bastogne

Great idea for a thread. :thumbsup:

Poem - http://www.poetry-archive.com/p/the_raven.html by Edgar Allan Poe

Book - I have two: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.

Quote - "Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusemants, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

This quote takes place during a scene in A Game of Thrones in which one of Lord Robb Stark's bannermen demand to lead the vanguard of entire Northmen army. Fair warning: this is entirely from memory so there's bound to be errors.

The Greatjon: "I'll not be lead by a boy so green he pisses grass!" *The Greatjon draws his sword*

Robb's direwolf hops across the table they're all sitting at and bites two of Greatjons fingers off.

Robb Stark: "My lord father taught me that it meant death to bare steel against your liege lord, but doubtless you only meant to cut my meat."

The Greatjon: "Your meat... is bloody tough!"

by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


- Cosmic Bandito, by A.C. Weisbecker

the five part Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy



"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.."

A quote my grandpa use to say to me"Son,either you can live for something or die for nothing"
Another cool quote was giles Corey when he was being tortured in Salem he said "More weight"

You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.
He was "Din! Din! Din!
"You limpin' lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!
"Hi! Slippy hitherao!
"Water, get it! Panee lao
"You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din."
The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,
For a piece o' twisty rag
An' a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment 'e could find.
When the sweatin' troop-train lay
In a sidin' through the day,
Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl,
We shouted " Harry By!"
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
"You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been?
"You put some juldee in it
"Or I'll marrow you this minute
"If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!"

'E would dot an' carry one
Till the longest day was done;
An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin' nut,
'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear.
With 'is mussick' on 'is back,
'E would skip with our attack,
An' watch us till the bugles made "Retire,"
An' for all 'is dirty 'ide
'E was white, clear white, inside
When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!
It was "Din! Din! Din!"
With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front-ranks shout,
"Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"

I sha'n't forgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been.
I was chokin' mad with thirst,
An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.
'E lifted up my 'ead,
An' he plugged me where I bled, An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water green.
It was crawlin' and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
"'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen"
"'E's chawin' up the ground,
"An' 'e's kickin' all around:
"For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!

'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died,
"I 'ope you liked your drink" sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone
Where it's always double drill and no canteen.
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

Can't edit on phone
I didn't read old andys quote before I posted so i didn't know they would be similar

"Speak softly and carry a big stick"

"Death had to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake there would have been a fight".

As for books and poems, they are too numerous to select 1 favorite.

"I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse"

-Louis The Lazy, King of France

Book: Justine by Marquis de Sade

Poem: I don't really know.. Maybe The Conqueror Worm by Poe

Quote: "For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication" - Nietzsche

Books - I cannot choose a favorite. It's hard for me to rank certain books above one another.

Quotes - Again, I cannot choose a single favorite, but I have a couple of my favorites in my signature.

Poems - Poems svck. (Honestly, I'm not enough of a fan to be able to label many favorites.)

Favorite Poem: Poetry = a lesser form of literature. All it's good for is expressin' emotions (Emos!) and to con girls into thinkin' that you're a "deep" individual. The first is more often than not pathetic but the second is reasonable.

Book: The word "book" is too ambiguous

Short Story: "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson

Novella: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Epic Poem: Paradise Lost by John Milton

Novel: The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Series: The Dark Tower by Stephen King

Philosophy/History/Political Science: The Road to Serdom by F.A. Hayek

Satire: The Prince by Machiavelli

Play: Inherit the Wind by Lawrence and Lee

Quote

"The Greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he does not exist.



I love his works.

When I saw Paradise Lost I knew I had to post this.

"If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression- for, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and everything like totality is at once destroyed. But since, ceteris paribus, no poet can afford to dispense with anything that may advance his design, it but remains to be seen whether there is, in extent, any advantage to counterbalance the loss of unity which attends it. Here I say no, at once. What we term a long poem is, in fact, merely a succession of brief ones- that is to say, of brief poetical effects. It is needless to demonstrate that a poem is such only inasmuch as it intensely excites, by elevating the soul; and all intense excitements are, through a psychal necessity, brief. For this reason, at least, one-half of the "Paradise Lost" is essentially prose- a succession of poetical excitements interspersed, inevitably, with corresponding depressions- the whole being deprived, through the extremeness of its length, of the vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity of effect."

Poe's http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/poe/composition.html. You should read it if you haven't already.

My favorite poem is The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, you should know who that is. :batman:

My favorite book of all time is The House of the Scorpion by Nancy farmer. I've read it once every year since I was nine or ten years old.

My favorite quote:

"But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. One might think that the atmosphere was made transparent, with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Found that one in my Hubble imaging book (amazing book, has a bunch of beautiful pictures that the Hubble telescope has taken), it's now taped to the wall in my bedroom, which is full of a bunch of other pictures that fell out of it.

The quote was purely from memory so there may be a mistake or two.

Just thought of another great quote by Albert Einstein:
"The most beautiful thing we can observe is the mysterious, for indeed it is the root of all art and science."

Again that was from memory, so it may not be 100% his words.

Not really a favorite poem but if I had to pick one it'd be " The Raven "

Favorite book is still 1984 by George Orwell with Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card close behind.

One of my favorite quotes: " Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. " - Harper Lee

For as much as I love that piece by Thomas that Old Andy gave, I would have to say my favorite it Frosts' The Road not Taken:


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


As for quotes I will list just a few of the many I carry around with me every day.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. - John Stuart Mill

I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious. - Vince Lombardi

If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. - Herman Melville (from Moby dike)


Favorite book? That's a tough one. I've read so many and disliked so few. It kinda depends on my mood. Right now I'm leaning more towards The Andromeda Strain or Frankenstein :shrug:

Favorite poem? Defiantly Beowulf :hehe:

Favourite poem: "This is a haiku, / I am not good at these things, / Refrigerator." I never really got into poems, as you can probably tell. I believe that's 5/7/5. I was never that good with syllables. I blame my grade school teachers. They all had different views on where syllables start and end.

Favourite book? That's a tough one. It's probably a five-way tie between Tom Clancy's Executive Orders, Debt of Honor, George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano (Sirens of Titan was pretty good as well).

I like the Clancy novels because the plot is so well thought out and written (Executive Orders is a direct sequel to Debt of Honor. Very suspenseful at times and I just couldn't put either of them down once the action got rolling (about 450 pages into Debt of Honor... yeah there was alot of setting up). I don't really think I need to say much about 1984. I love the ending. Brave New World... I hate that book the first time I read it. But, after reading five or six or times, I realized it wasn't meant to be read for it's story. All the underlying messages and thoughts are what makes this book so great. It really makes you think about things in a way you (well me, anyways) never thought of before. Player Piano was very similar to Brave New World, in some regards. Not quite as thought provoking but the plot was much better.

If anyone's wondering why I read Brave New World so many times despite hating it the first time, I wrote an essay for my Grade 12 English class comparing (or contrasting? I don't remember which one) certain elements from that book and Player Piano.

My favourite quote comes from Sirens of Titan. I don't remember what it was word-for-word, so I'm'a paraphrase it for y'all. "The problem with dumb [people born out of wedlock] is that sometimes they're too dumb to know there's such a thing as being smart."

Can we include song lyrics in this thread or are they off-limits? Some songs have really good lyrics. Others, not so much, haha.

It really is a shame that Orwell, Huxley, or Vonnegut never won the Nobel Prize in Literature. :confused:

One article I read, which was addressing why so many great authors had never won the award, said that:

"And that appears to be something of a goal of the Swedish Academy--to select those writers who are really voicing the angst of the voiceless, the nitty-gritty realities of humanity."

Which really seems kinda dumb to me. Isn't point of the Nobel Prizes to recognize outstanding accomplishments and/or contributions to that particular field? If so, all three definitely deserved to win. Especially Huxley and Orwell. Brave New World is just pure brilliance and 1984 is incredible.

another one of my favorites, by Yeats


Under Ben Bulben


Oh, and by the way.., Ben Bulben is a big.bloody.rock!

Favorite poem is Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen. Ridiculously depressing, but so beautifully evocative.

Favorite book is A Christmas Carol by Charles dikeens.

Favorite quote: "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..." - General John Sedgwick (1813-1864), last words