English Literature Quotes Flashcards
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Easter 1916,
W.B Yeats
(Modernism)
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of all.
Easter 1916,
W.B Yeats
(Modernism)
“We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead.
……
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.”
Easter 1916,
W.B Yeats
(Modernism)
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Easter 1916,
W.B Yeats
(Modernism)
“And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?”
Easter 1916,
W.B Yeats
(Modernism)
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
Easter 1916,
W.B Yeats
(Modernism)
The girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great bitterness: The men that is now is only palaver and what they can get out of you.
…… coloured as if he felt he had made a mistake and, without looking at her, kicked off his galoshes…
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
He was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers…He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not understand. They would think that he was airing his superior education. He would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl in the pantry.
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
It was she who had chosen the names for her sons for she was very sensible of the dignity of family life. Thanks to her, Constantine was now senior curate in Balbriggan and, thanks to her, ….. himself had taken his degree in the Royal University. A shadow passed over his face as he remembered her sullen opposition to his marriage.
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
….. tried to banish from his mind all memory of the unpleasant incident with Miss Ivors. Of course the girl or woman, or whatever she was, was an enthusiast but there was a time for all things. Perhaps he ought not to have answered her like that. But she had no right to call him a West Briton before people, even in joke. She had tried to make him ridiculous before people, heckling him and staring at him with her rabbit’s eyes.
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
I know all about the honour of God, Mary Jane, but I think it’s not at all honourable for the pope to turn out the women of the choirs that have slaved there all their lives and put little whipper-snappers of boys over their heads. I suppose it is for the good of the Church if the pope does it. But it’s not just Mary Jane, and it’s not right.
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
…… took his seat boldly at the head of the table and, having looked to the edge of the carver, plunged his fork firmly into the goose. He felt quite at ease now for he was an expert carver and liked nothing better than to find himself at the head of a well-laden table.
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
Those days might, without exaggeration, be called spacious days: and if they are gone beyond recall let us hope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not willingly let die.
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
But yet, continued …….., his voice falling into a softer inflection, there are always in gatherings such as this sadder thoughts that will recur to our minds: thoughts of the past, of youth, of changes, of absent faces that we miss here tonight. Our path through life is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we to brood upon them always we could not find the heart to go on bravely with our work among the living. … Therefore, I will not linger on the past. I will not let any gloomy moralizing intrude upon us here tonight. Here we are gathered together for a brief moment from the bustle and rush of our everyday routine.
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
A wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart and went coursing in warm flood along his arteries. Like the tender fire of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together and remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had not quenched his soul or hers. Their children, his writing, her household cares had not quenched all their souls’ tender fire. In one letter that he had written to her then he had said: “Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?”
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
Was she annoyed, too, about something? If she would only turn to him or come to him of her own accord! To take her as she was would be brutal. No, he must see some ardour in her eyes first. He longed to be master of her strange mood.
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another…He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealizing his own clownish lusts…
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
I think he died for me, she answered. A vague terror seized …… at this answer as if, at that hour when he had hoped to triumph, some impalpable and vindictive being was coming against him, gathering forces against him in its vague world.
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the glory of some passion than fade and wither dismally with age…He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love.
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead…His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His 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.
The Dead
James Joyce
(Modernism)
