words to inspire before you expire
“‘But, Bernard, you’re saying the most awful things.’
‘Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?’
‘I don’t know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody’s happy nowadays.’
He laughed. ‘Yes, “Everybody’s happy nowadays.” We begin giving the children that at five. But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else’s way.'”
—from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
“‘[T]hat is the secret to happiness and virtue—liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.'”
—from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
“Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”
—from Lord of the Flies by William Golding
“The clouds were sitting on the land; they squeezed, produced moment by moment this close, tormenting heat. Even the butterflies deserted the open space where the obscene thing grinned and dripped. Simon lowered his head, carefully keeping his eyes shut, then sheltered them with his hand. There were no shadows under the trees but everywhere a pearly stillness, so that what was real seemed illusive and without definition. The pile of guts was a black blob of flies that buzzed like a saw. After a while these flies found Simon. Gorged, they alighted by his runnels of sweat and drank. They tickled under his nostrils and played leap-frog on his thighs. They were black and iridescent green and without number; and in front of Simon, the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick and grinned.”
—from Lord of the Flies by William Golding
“‘Are there ghosts, Piggy? Or beasts?’
‘Course there aren’t.’
‘Why not?’
”Cos things wouldn’t make sense. Houses an’ streets, an’ TV—they wouldn’t work.’
. . .
‘But s’pose they don’t make sense? Not here, on this island? Supposing things are watching us and waiting?'”
—from Lord of the Flies by William Golding
“They had guessed before that this was an island: clambering among the pink rocks, with the sea on either side, and the crystal heights of air, they had known by some instinct that the sea lay on every side. But there seemed something more fitting in leaving the last word till they stood on the top, and could see a circular horizon of water.
Ralph turned to the others.
‘This belongs to us.'”
—from Lord of the Flies by William Golding
“‘Atticus, he was real nice. . . .’
‘Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.'”
—from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
“‘The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.’
Atticus was speaking so quietly his last word crashed on our ears. I looked up, and his face was vehement. ‘There’s nothing more sickening to me that a low-grade white man who’ll take advantage of a Negro’s ignorance. Don’t fool yourselves—it’s all adding up and one of these days we’re going to pay the bill for it. I hope it’s not in you children’s time.'”
—from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
“‘Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.'”
—from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
“Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces. I could not remember when the lines above Atticus’s moving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow—anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
—from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
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