Explore Book Quotes

“He spoke very well about the decency and comradeship natural to animals. ‘Animals don’t behave like men,’ he said. ‘If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don’t sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures’ lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.‘”

“But I will tell you this secret thing, which not one of them saw, not even August, the thing that brought me the most cause for gladness. It was how Sugar-Girl said what she did, like I was truly one of them. Not one person in the room said, ‘Sugar-Girl, really, talking about white people like that and we have a white person present.’ They didn’t even think of me being different.”

“Tess gave herself over completely to the game and the joy of companionship. It happened occasionally that she met a friend of a sort in the animal world, but as with human friends, it always seemed to be hard work. This was different. The chipmunk was as eager for company as she was.”

“O ye who trace through scattered verse the sound Of those long sighs wherewith I fed my heart Amid youth’s errors, when in greater part That man unlike this present man was found; For the mixed strain which here I do compound Of empty hopes and pains that vainly start, Whatever soul hath truly felt love’s smart, With pity and with pardon will abound. But now I see full well how long I earned All men’s reproof; and oftentimes my soul Lies crushed by its own grief; and it doth seem For such misdeed shame is the fruitage whole, And wild repentance and the knowledge learned That worldly joy is still a short, short dream.”

“I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”

“Well, look to it then that thou dost not kill the man-cub. He is no tree trunk to sharpen thy blunt claws upon. But what are those Master Words? I am more likely to give help than to ask it”—Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chorus talons at the end of it—“still I should like to know.”

His hatred, like a powerless though furious wave, was broken against the strong ascendancy which Mercédès exercised over him.

“anyways, I’m suited. I don’t want nothing better’n this. I don’t ever get enough to eat, gen’ally—and here they can’t come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so.”

“The ocean of mundane cyclic existence is like an illusion.”

Dantès must be crushed to gratify Villefort’s ambition.