A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream is probably Shakespeare’s most popular comedy.  It’s believed that he wrote the play between 1590 and 1597.

The play focuses on the marriage of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, and Hippolyta, the Amazon Queen. Throw in a bunch of Athenians, some fairies and an acting troupe and you’ve got A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind. ~ A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night's Dream Quotes

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing by William Blake

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Five Facts About E. M. Forster (1879 – 1970)

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E. M. Forster QuotesEdward Morgan Forster, known as E. M. Forster, was an English writer.  His best known works include A Room with a View, Howards End and A Passage to India.

  1. Forster was born on January 1, 1879.  Sadly, his father died  of tuberculosis in 1880. Forster was raised by his mother and his paternal aunts.
  2. Forster inherited a great deal of money from a paternal aunt  who passed away in 1887.
  3. In the 1930s and 1940s Forster was a broadcaster on BBC Radio
  4. Forster died of a stroke on June 7, 1970 in Coventry. He was 91.
  5. Maurice was published posthumously. Its homosexual themes caused some controversy as Forster’s sexual preferences weren’t widely known previously.

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice. ~ A Room With A View by E. M. Forster

Novels by E. M. Forster

Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)
The Longest Journey (1907)
A Room with a View (1908)
Howards End (1910)
A Passage to India (1924)
Maurice (written in 1913–14, published posthumously in 1971)

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50 New Quotes Added

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Quotes from LiteratureFifty new quotes were added to the site today.  All of our quotes list an author and a source. We’re proud that this quotation collection is curated by people and NOT by a computer program.

Here are some quotes from the new additions.

If you need something to worship, then worship life — all life, every last crawling bit of it! We’re all in this beauty together! ~ Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

The end of religion is not to teach us how to die, but how to live. ~ Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

“A man’s fate is his own temper; and according to that will be his opinion as to the particular manner in which the course of events is regulated. A consistent man believes in Destiny, a capricious man in Chance.” ~ Vivian Grey by Benjamin Disraeli

“Who, being loved, is poor?” ~ A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice. ~ A Room With A View by E. M. Forster

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view. ~ Middlemarch by George Eliot

The course of true love never did run smooth. ~ A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

 

 

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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Great Expectations QuotesGreat Expectations was the thirteenth novel that Charles Dickens wrote.  In the UK the novel was published in weekly installments in All the Year Round from December of 1860 until August 1861.  Harper’s Weekly, in the United States, published installments of the novel from November 1860 through August of 1861.

All the Year Round was founded by Dickens. Its first issue was printed on April 30, 1859. The publication featured serialized novels.  In fact, the first novel it featured was Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities.

In October of 1860 sales of All the Year Round were declining.  The featured novel, A Day’s Ride by Charles Lever, wasn’t very popular.  In order to boost sales, Dickens adapted Great Expectations, originally planned for publication in another format, to be published in All the Year Round.  His plan worked and sales for the publication increased.

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.” ~ Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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Wheel Quotes From Literature

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Wheel QuotesHistory is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again. ~ A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad. ~ The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

“The world is a wheel, and it will all come round right.” ~ Endymion by Benjamin Disraeli

Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all. ~ The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Wheel Quotes from Literature

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

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Romeo and Juliet QuotesRomeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare.  No one knows when Shakespeare wrote the play, but it first appeared in print in 1597.

The play features two star-crossed lovers whose deaths reconcile their feuding families.  It was among Shakespeare’s most popular plays during his lifetime.  Along with Hamlet, it is one of his most frequently performed plays.

“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou her maid art far more fair than she.” ~ Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

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Wuthering Heights QuotesWuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, was published in 1847 under the pen name of Ellis Bell.  The novel was written between October 1845 and June 1846.

Bronte died in 1848 and Wuthuring Heights is her only novel. The review from the Atlas is typical of the response to the novel at the time of its publication.

Wuthering Heights is a strange, inartistic story. There are evidences in every chapter of a sort of rugged power—an unconscious strength—which the possessor seems never to think of turning to the best advantage. The general effect is inexpressibly painful. We know nothing in the whole range of our fictitious literature which presents such shocking pictures of the worst forms of humanity.

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If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. ~ Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Villette by Charlotte Bronte

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Villette QuotesVillette is the fourth novel by Charlotte Bronte.  It was published in 1853. Bronte drew on her own experience as a teacher in Brussels in writing the novel. The book features an interesting mix of gothic and psychological themes.

I seemed to hold two lives—the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter. ~ Villette by Charlotte Bronte

Buy Villette at Amazon.com

5 Imagination Quotes from Literature

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Imagination QuotesIt was better to know the worst than to wonder. ~ Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

“You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.” ~ The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

My imagination requires a judicious rein; I am afraid to let it loose, for it carries me sometimes into appalling places beyond the stars and beneath the world. ~ The Listener by Algernon Blackwood

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic. ~ The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe

“I call people rich when they’re able to meet the requirements of their imagination.” ~ The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

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