Words Underlined

vernacular n. [vernaculus, native] 1. the natuve language or dialect of a country or place 2. the common, everyday language of a people 3. the jargon of a profession or trade

John Steinbeck wrote in The Pastures of Heaven, that "...life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do." In a feeble attempt to escape the unreality of life, in this website I provide proof that I lived and breathed and thought and underlined books. Yes, it took half of forever to compile and edit into HTML; and yes, I am well aware that 99% of the public (not to mention my own friends, who have a far greater likelihood of looking at this site) are significantly less bookish than I and therefore would be significantly less inclined to read more than a few lines of this page. I did it for myself more than anyone, though with the hope that some unknown "kindred spirit" might take interest in it and enjoy these lines as much as I do.

• "Glory be! I'd ha' been a better man all my life if I'd known there were things like this!"
• "Digory suddenly remembered that Uncle Andrew had used exactly the same words. But they sounded much grander when Queen Jadis had said them; perhaps because Uncle Andrew was not seven feet tall and dazzlingly beautiful."

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

• "Yes, of course you'll get back to Narnia some day. Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don't try to get there at all. It'll happen when you're not looking for it."

C.S. Lewis, The Horse and his Boy

• "Child, I am telling you your story, not hers. No-one is told any story but their own."
• "...when they were grown up they were so used to quarreling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently."
• "...this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there's hunger in the land ... to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man..."

C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian

• "But it wasn't my fault anyway, was it? Oh Aslan, you don't mean it was? How could I -- I couldn't have left the others and come up to you alone, how could I? ... oh well, I suppose I could. Yes, and it wouldn't have been alone, I know, not if I was with you."
• "You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve... and that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth. Be content."

• "Sometimes, perhaps, I am a little impatient, waiting for the day when they can be governed by wisdom instead of this rough magic."
• "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This is the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."
• "...when the others rejoined him a little later they found him changed; he was white and there were tears in his eyes. 'It's no good,' he said. ... 'Aslan has spoken to me. And he said -- he said -- oh, I can't bear it. The worst thing he could have said. You're to go on -- Reep and Edmund, and Lucy, and Eustace; and I'm to go back. Alone. And at once. And what is the good of anything?"

C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

• "You see, Aslan didn't tell... what would happen. He only told her what to do... but that doesn't let us off following the Sign."
• "Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things -- trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself... Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones... That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan... I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can, even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, ... we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

• "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that sometimes it looked a little like this."

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

• "...then he remembers all this, and boils it inside him and makes it into poems and wisdom."

C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

• "Sweetly and gently this time Maleldil makes me older."
• "The only difference was that he knew -- almost as a historical proposition -- that it was going to be done. He might beg, weep, or rebel -- might curse or adore -- sing like a martyr or blaspheme like a devil. It made not the slightest difference. The thing was going to be done. There was going to arrive, in the course of time, a moment at which he would have done it. The future act stood there, fixed and unaltered as if he had already performed it. ... the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say that he had delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and has emerged into unassailable freedom."

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

• "Aurë entuluva! Day shall come again!"
• "All roads are now bent."
• "Among the tales of sorrow and ruin that come down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures."
• "Therefore he willed that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein; but they should have a virtue to shape their lives, amid the powers and chances of the world... which is as fate to all things else..."
• "...no theme may be played which hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined."
• "Hope rather that in the end even the least of your desires shall have fruit. The love of Arda was set in your hearts by Il£vatar, and he does not plant to no purpose. Nonetheless, many ages of Men unborn may pass before that purpose is made known..."
• "...you are punished for the rebellion of Men... in which you had small part, and so it is that you die. But that was not at first appointed for a punishment. Thus you escape, and leave the world, and are not bound to it, in hope or weariness. Which of us therefore should envy the others?"
• "For even after the ruin the hearts of the D£nedain were still set westwards; and though they knew indeed that the world was changed, they said: 'Avall¢n‰ is vanished from the Earth and the Land of Aman is taken away, and in the world of this present darkness they cannot be found. Yet they once were, and therefore they still are, in true being and in the whole shape of the world as it was first devised.'"

J.R.R.Tolkien, The Hobbit

• “He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.”
• “There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that hey learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.”
• “This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost some of the neighbours’ respect, but he gained-well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.
• “‘That would be no good,’ said the wizard, ‘not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found.”
• “Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t really suppose, do you, that your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

• "I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way."
• "The future, good or ill, was not forgotten, but ceased to have any power over the present."
• "But I do not think that any speech will help me. For I know what I should do, but I am afraid of doing it..."
• "This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the wise."

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

• "...the Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong."
• "There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be in dark."
• "It strikes me that folk takes their peril with them into Lorien, and finds it there because they've brought it."
• "Of course, it is likely enough... that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents. But if we stayed home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later... that is why we are marching now... Still, I should have liked to see the songs come true... but songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely."
• "`What shall I do, what shall I do?' he said. `Did I come all this way with him for nothing?' And then he remembered his own voice speaking words that at the time he did not understand himself, at the beginning of the journey: I have something to do before the end. I must see it through, sir, if you understand. ... He looked at the bright point of the sword. He thought of the places behind where there was a black brink and an empty fall into nothingness. There was no escape that way. That was to do nothing, not even to grieve. That was not what he had set out to do. `What am I to do then?' he cried again, and now he seemed plainly to know the hard answer: see it through. Another lonely journey, and the worst. ... No chance to go back... and get advice or permission... He drew a deep breath... And then he bent his own neck and put the chain upon it, and at once his head was bowed to the ground with the weight of the Ring, as if a a great stone had been slung upon him. But slowly, as if the weight became less, or new strength grew in him, he raised his head, and then with a great effort got to his feet and found that he could walk and bear his burden."

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

• "Then the heart of Eowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her."
• "In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory..."
• "...the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
• "The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make; not real new things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them..."
• "I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them."
• "But you will be healed. You were meant to be solid and whole, and you will be... Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do."
• "Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they have is not ours to rule."

E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

• "The well-known world had broken up, and there emerged Florence, a magic city where people thought and did the most extraordinary things."
• "Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them."
• "There is at times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship."
• "He wanted to live now, to win at tennis, to stand for all he was worth in the sun -- in the sun which had begun to decline and was shining in her eyes; and he did win."
• "Something had happened to the living; they had come to a situation where character tells, and where Childhood enters upon the branching paths of Youth."
• "Ah! It was worth while; it was the great joy that they had expected and the countless little joys of which they had never dreamt."
• "For a young man his face was rugged, and -- until the shadows fell upon it -- hard. Enshadowed, it sprang into tenderness... Healthy and muscular, he yet gave her the feeling of grayness, of tragedy that might only find solution in the night."
• "'Apooshoo, apooshoo, apooshoo,' went Freddy, swimming for two strokes in either direction, and then becoming involved in reeds or mud. 'Is it worth it?' asked the other, Michelangelesque on the flooded margin. The bank broke away, and he fell into the pool before he had weighed the question properly. 'Hee-poof -- I've swallowed a pollywog! I shall die -- Mr. Beebe, water's wonderful, water's simply ripping.'"

E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

• "You are so splendid, Mr. Herriton, that I can't bear to see you wasted."
• "But at the same time -- I don't know -- so many things have happened here -- people have lived so hard and so splendidly -- I can't explain."
• "It's not enough to see clearly; I'm muddle-headed and stupid, and not worth a quarter of you, but I have tried to do what seemed right at the time."

Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

• "...still all bleeding from the lacerations of his destiny..."
• "But we reckon without God. God said: You think that you are going to be abandoned, dolt? No."
• "Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!"
• "Oh, yes, forbid me to die. Who knows? I shall obey perhaps. I was just dying when you came. That stopped me, it seemed to me that I was born again."
• "Do what he might, he always fell back upon this sharp dilemma which was at the bottom of his thought. To remain in paradise and there become a demon! To re-enter hell and there become an angel!"
• "...she slowly opened her eyes in which the gloomy deepness of death appeared, and said to him with an accent the sweetness of which already seemed to come from another world: 'And then, do you know, Monsieur Marius, I believe I was a little in love with you.' She essayed to smile again and expired."

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

• "Will you give me leave to defer your raptures? ... At present I have not room to do them justice."
• "Well, he certainly is very agreeable, and I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a stupider person!"
• "Had she merely dined with him, she might only have discovered whether he had a good appetite; but you must remember that four evenings have also been spent together -- and four evenings may do a great deal."
• "She wished, she feared that the master of the house might be amongst them; and whether she wished or feared it most, she could scarcely determine."
• "...he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do."

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

• "Pretty? Oh, pretty doesn't seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful, either. They don't go far enough... It's the first thing I ever saw that couldn't be improved upon by imagination. It just satisfied me here... it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache."
• "'When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road... Now there is a bend in it. I don't know when lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend... I wonder how the road beyond it goes -- what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows -- what new landscapes -- what new beauties -- what curves and hills and valleys further on.' ... if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joys of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road!"

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

• "He certainly needs something... Rachel Lynde would say it was a good spanking."
• "The lines and verses are only the outward garments of the poem and are no more really it than your ruffles and flounces are you, Jane. The real poem is the soul within them... and that beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem. It is not every day that one sees a soul... even of a poem."
• "I'm just tired of everything... even of the echoes. There is nothing in my life but echoes... echoes of lost hopes and dreams and joys. They're beautiful and mocking."
• "...her greatest attraction was the aura of possibility surrounding her... the power of future development that was in her. She seemed to walk in an atmosphere of things about to happen."
• "When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly up on the wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize I drop down to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part is glorious as long as it lasts... it's like soaring through a sunset. I think it almost pays for the thud."
• "Perhaps... it was better to have, like Anne, the 'vision and the faculty divine' ... that gift which the world cannot bestow or take away, of looking at life through some transfiguring... or revealing?... medium, whereby everything seemed apparelled in celestial light, wearing a glory and a freshness not visible to those who... looked at things only through prose."
• "It was as if a veil that had hung before her inner consciousness had been lifted, giving to her view a revelation of unsuspected feelings and realities. Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music; perhaps... perhaps... love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath. ... The page of girlhood had been turned, as by an unseen finger, and the page of womanhood was before her with all its charm and mystery, its pain and gladness... And over the river in purple durance the echoes bided their time."

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

• “It is never pleasant to have our old shrines desecrated, even when we have outgrown them.”
• “It wouldn’t do for use to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about.”
• “‘I wish I were dead, or that it were tomorrow night,’ groaned Phil. ‘If you live long enough both wishes will come true,’ said Anne calmly.”
• “Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different-something for which unaccustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth.”
• “To be told in rhythmical cadences that her eyes were stars of the morning-that her cheek had the flush it stole from the sunrise-that her lips were redder than the roses of Paradise, was thrillingly romantic. Gilbert would never have dreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows. But then, Gilbert could see a joke. She had once told Roy a funny story-and he had not seen the point of it. She recalled the chummy laugh she and Gilbert had had together over it, and wondered uneasily if life with a man who had no sense of humor might not be somewhat uninteresting in the long run. But who could expect a melancholy hero to see the humorous side of things? It was flatly unreasonable.”

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

• "'Prunes and prisms' are my doom, and I may as well make up my mind to it. I came here to moralize, not to hear about things that make me skip to think of."
• "...absently sketched ... a curly-headed girl in gorgeous array, promenading down a ballroom on the arm of a tall gentleman, both faces being left a blur according to the latest fashion in art, which was safe but not altogether satisfactory."
• "Amy's lecture did Laurie good, though, of course, he did not own it till long afterward; men seldom do, for when women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice until they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do..."
• "...taking up the hand which lay on the arm of his chair, he pointed to the roughened forefinger, a burn on the back, and two or three little hard spots on the palm. 'A burnt-offering has been made of vanity; this hardened palm has earned something better than blisters...'"
• "'It's genius simmering, perhaps. I'll let it simmer, and see what comes of it,' he said, with a secret suspicion, all the while, that it wasn't genius, but something far more common. Whatever it was, it simmered to some purpose, for he ... began to long for some real and earnest work to go at, soul and body..."
• "I'd have a stable full of Arabian steeds, a room piled with books, and I'd write out of a magic inkstand, so that my works should be as famous as Laurie's music. I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle -- something heroic or wonderful, that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all some day."
• "She did not think herself a genius by any means; but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh. Sleep forsook her eyes, meals stood untasted, day and night were all to short to enjoy the happiness which blessed her only at such times, and made these hours worth living, even if they bore no other fruit."

Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy

• "Our thesis [was] that if one of us liked something there must be something to like about it which the other could find..."
• "And our trust in each other will not only be based on love and loyalty but on the fact of a thousand sharings -- a thousand strands twisted into something unbreakable."
• "I suspected that all the yearnings for I knew not what that I had ever felt -- when autumn leaves were burning in the twilight, when wild geese flew crying overhead, when I looked up at bare branches against the stars, when spring arrived on an April morning -- were in fact yearnings for him. For God."

Gene Stratton Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost

• "I am beginning to think that things happen as they are ordained from the beginning... My life is all mountaintop or canyon. I wish someone would lead me into a few days of 'green pastures.'"
• "Philip turned his face toward the west woods and tightly closed his eyes. It was a boyish thing to do, and it caught the hesitating girl in the depths of her heart as the boy element in a man ever appeals to a motherly woman."
• "To the extent of my brain power I realize Your presence, and all it is in me to comprehend of Your power. ... Help me to unshackle and expand my soul to the fullest realization of Your wonders. Almighty God, make me bigger, make me broader!"
• "She looked into his eyes and smiled serenely. 'If the talking trees tell me this winter the secret of how a man may grow perfect, I will write you what it is, Philip. In all the time I have known you, I have never liked you so little. Good-bye.' She drew away her hand and swiftly turned back to the road."

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

• "...a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fantasies."
• "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
• "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

• "...we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world."
• "Now-look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do it... Don't you hear me? You have a choice!"
• "'Can't you catch her?' 'Sure -- and I could throw her down and punch her in the face and make her talk to me. But I won't.'"
• "As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself."
• "I love that dust heap... I love every flint, the plow-breaking outcroppings, the thin and barren topsoil, the waterless heart of her. Somewhere in my dust heap there's a richness."
• "Cal's trying to find himself... I guess this personal hide-and-seek is not unusual. And some people are 'it' all their lives -- hopelessly 'it.'"
• "Well, here's your box. Nearly everything that I have is in it, and it's not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts -- the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation."

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

• "He drew men towards him by what was best in them."
• "...a delicious sensation of having come upon something unmistakably real."
• "This was the unbounded power of eloquence -- of words -- of burning noble words."
• "...that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams..."
• "I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship."
• "...I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her... She had given me a chance to come out a bit -- to find out what I could do."

Thornton Wilder, The Woman of Andros

• "She cited often the saying of Plato that the true philosophers were the young men of their age. 'Not,' she would add, 'because they do it very well; but because they rush upon ideas with their whole soul. Later one philosophizes for praise, or for apology, or because it is a complicated intellectual game.'"
• "I am happy because I love this Pamphilus -- Pamphilus the anxious, Pamphilus the stupid. Why cannot someone tell him that it is not necessary to suffer so about living? . . . Pamphilus, you are another herald from the future. Someday men will be like you. Do not frown so..."

Thornton Wilder, Our Town

• "'So all that was going on and we never noticed... Oh earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you!'
  She looks toward the stage manager and asks abruptly, through her tears:
  'Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? -- every, every minute?'
  'No.'
  Pause.
  'The saints and poets, maybe -- they do some.'"
• "I want you to try and remember what it was like to have been very young. And particularly the days when you were first in love; when you were like a person sleepwalking, and you didn't quite see the street you were in, and didn't quite hear everything that was said to you. You're just a little bit crazy."

Thornton Wilder, The Alcestiad

• "Living or dead, we are watched; we are guided; we are understood. Oh, Admetus, lie quiet, lie still!"
• "Love is not the meaning. It is one of the signs that there is meaning . . ."
• "I am not skilled in speech. You can read all minds. Read what is in mine, or rather . . . yourself plant in my mind those wishes which only you can fulfill."
• "Only a god can understand that -- only that loving smile. Forgiveness is not within our power -- we commoner men. Only the strong and the pure can forgive. I never wanted that she should forgive that evil moment -- no! -- for in her remembering it lay my happiness; for her remembering and her forgiving were one."
• "Great happiness was given to me once, yes. . . but shall I forget that now? And forget the one who gave it to me? All that has happened since came from the same hands that gave me the happiness. I shall not doubt that it is good and has a part in something that I cannot see..."

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

• "All that glisters is not gold, Often you have heard that told."
• "Beshrew your eyes, They have o'er-looked me and divided me..."
• "Only my blood speaks to you in my veins..."
• "Lorenzo, certain, and my love indeed, For who love I so much? And now who knows but you, Lorenzo, whether I am yours?"
• "The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed, It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes..."
• "You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,
  Such as I am; though for myself alone I would not be ambitious in my wish
  To wish myself much better, yet for you I would be trebled twenty times myself...
  but the full sum of me, is sum of something... which, to term in gross,
  Is an unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpracticed,
  Happy in this..."

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

• "'A was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again."
• "There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. ... The readiness is all."
• "To sleep -- perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
  For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
  When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
  Must give us pause."
• "What a piece of work is man, who noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?"

Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus

• "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
  And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
  Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
  Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!
  Come, Helen, give me my soul again."
• "Satan begins to sift me with his pride:
  As in this furnace God shall try my faith,
  My faith, vile hell, shall triumph over thee.
  Ambitious fiends! see how the heavens smile
  At your repulse, and laugh your state to scorn!
  Hence, hell! for hence I fly unto my God."

Henry Vaughan, "The World"

• "I saw Eternity the other night,
  Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
  All calm as it was bright..."

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott"

• "There she weaves by night and day
  A magic web with colours gay.
  She has heard a whisper say,
  A curse is on her if she stay
  To look down to Camelot ...
  'I am half sick of shadows,' said
  The Lady of Shalott."

Emily Dickinson, "God Made a Little Gentian"

• "...it tried to be a rose and failed
  and all the summer laughed;
  but just before the snows there came
  a purple creature that ravished all the hill;
  and summer hid her forehead,
  and mockery was still."

John Milton, various poems

• "O may we soon again renew that song,
  And keep in tune with Heav'n, till God ere long
  To his celestial consort us unite,
  To live with him and sing in endless morn of light."
• "When Faith and Love which parted from thee never,
  Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God,
  Meekly thou didst resign this earthy load
  Of death, called life; which us from life doth sever."
• "...what in me is dark
  Ilumin, what is low raise and support;
  That to the highth of this great Argument
  I may assert Eternal Providence,
  And justifie the wayes of God to men."

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