Prose By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet (With occasional rambling accompaniment.)
And there were many indications that Hanna Wendling was moving in this direction, and in essentials perhaps she was simply as usual anticipating a coming fashion, for the entropy of man implies his absolute isolation, and that which hitherto he has called harmony or equilbrium was perhaps only an image, an image of the social structure which he made for himself, and he could not help making, so long as he remained part of it. But the more lonely he becomes, the more disintegrated and isolated will things seem to him, the more indifferent he must become to the connections between things and finally he will scarcely be able any longer to see those connections-Hermann Broch, The Sleepwalkers, p.400 (Besides being well articulated, I find the essential insight of this passage remains true, and a powerful argument for not dislocating oneself from society, like the following quote;
Indifference is the paralysis of the soul. It is premature death.-Anton Chekhov, 'A Dreary Story'
The twins were too young to know that these were only history's henchmen, sent to square the books and collect the dues from those who broke its laws. Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear-civilisation's fear of nature, men's fear of women, power's fear of powerlessness, man's subliminal urge to destroy what he could neither subdue nor deny-Arundhati Roy, The God Of Small Things, ,p.308
History, said Steven, is a nightmare from which I have been trying to awaken-James Joyce, Ulysses, p.42(?)
One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.-Joyce, 'The Dead' [Dubliners] p.175
"Just listen to that," said the chief clerk next door, "he's turning the key." That was a great encouragement to Gregor, but they should all have shouted encouragement to him, his father and mother too; "Go on Gregor," they should have called out, "keep going, hold on to that key!" And in the belief they were all following his efforts intently, he clenched his jaws recklessly on the key with all the force at his command.-Franz Kafka, 'The Metamorphosis' pp.11-12 (While possibly the most depressing passage in the novella, this passage is technically innovative. It represents an early example [1915] of depicting the protagonist's thought processes as not only hypothetical, but naively contrary to reality, heightening the tragic irony..)
In the office in which I work there are five people of whom I am afraid. Each of these five people is afraid of four people (excluding overlaps), for a total of twenty, and each of these twenty people is afraid of six people, making a total of one hundred and twenty people who are feared by at least one person. Each of these one hundred and twenty people is afraid of the other one hundred and nineteen, and all of these one hundred and forty-five people are afraid of the twelve men at the top who helped found this company and build the company and now own and direct it.-Joseph Heller, 'Something Happened', p.19.
[Alyosha] having lost his mother when he was in his fourth year, he remembered her all the rest of his life, her face, her caresses, 'every bit as though she stood before me in real life'. Images of this kind may be recalled (and this is no secret) from a yet earlier age, as far back as the age of two, but in such a manner that they emerge all one's life only as bright points in the dark, like a tiny corner torn from an enormous picture which has all faded and disappeared, apart from that one little corner. Exactly so it was with him: he remembered a certain morning, aestival, calm, an open window, the oblique rays of the setting sun (those oblique rays were what he remembered most of all), in a corner of a room an icon, before it a lighted lamp, and in front of the icon on her knees, sobbing as in a fit of hysterics, with screechings and shriekings, his mother, gripping him with both hands, embracing him tightly to the point of pain and supplicating for him to the Mother of God, stretching him forth out of her embraces with both hands towards the icon as though into the protection of the Mother..-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov ,pp.16-17.
Means To An Ending
I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness-Joseph Conrad, 'Heart Of Darkness'
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further-..And one fine morning-
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.-F Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Great Gatsby', pp.171-2
Gazing up into the darkness, I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity, and my eyes burned with anger and anguish-Joyce, 'Araby' [Dubliners] p.40
His [Gabriel Conroy] soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.-Ibid, 'The Dead', (Quite possibly my favourite literary sentence of all.).175
And a humourous quote to end this selection.
'So this is it,' said Arthur, 'we are going to die.'
'Yes,' said Ford, 'except...no! Wait a minute!' He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. 'Whats this switch?" he cried.
'What? Where?' cried Arthur, twisting round.
'No, I was only fooling,' said Ford, 'we are going to die after all.'-Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, p.65.
Whether they be lines of poetry, novels or plays, i'd love for you to share them.
