Top 5 Quotes of the Year

Again, Fanda's Kaleidoscope. Quotes are my favourite. In fact, I tried to write down a quote every single week (which failed). Choosing just 5 favourite quotes from massive piles of pages is not an easy task. I have forgotten many of the quotes I found beautiful. So, in order to get those quotes, I consult my weekly meme "Weekend Quote" and my little phone where I read my books.

Here they are:

Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis

Who else has the right to talk about love more than our beloved Will, who speaks of so many kinds of affection? The pain of despair and hope in love, and generally in life, is summed up in these 3 lines.

“Despair and hope make thee ridiculous
The one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely,
In likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly”

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe

“All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”

Being cast out alone in the middle of nowhere, Robinson Crusoe found that life does not depend on riches, luxury, or comfort. In his island, he found a lot of things to be thankful of, and he realised that when we are thankful for what we have, we will be content, and that makes us happier, despite our circumstances.

Spenser's Faerie Qveene

“And later times things more vnknowne shall show.
Why then should witlesse man so much misweene
That nothing is, but that which he hath seene?
What if within the Moones faire shining spheare?
What if in euery other starre vnseene
Of other worldes he happily should heare?”

Grand things, again. Reading this, I remember that I started to sigh and imagine a vast unknown universe. I started to imagine what the world would be in years to come, what wonders, what miracles could happen. We know so little things that we need forever to discover the world we live in - and even that wouldn't be enough.

Thoreau's Walden

This is the quote I've always wanted to put on my Weekend Quote but always forgot to since I began to read the book a month ago (yes, and I haven't finished it).

"For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of men?"

Really, as I classic lover, I can't help but nodding to that remark. It doesn't mean that non-classics are rubbish. It's just that when a book is classic, it passes the test of time, so it can't be rubbish - at least probably not.

Tolkien's The Hobbit

"This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down."

If there's anything that the poets talk more of than Love and Death, it is Time. I wrote in my diary once that poets seem to hate time so much because time is the symbol of decay, of change, of uncertainty. Ah, goodness, now it reminds me of one of my poems.

So let's end it all. Those above are five quotes I choose for this year. I think those are big. What did I read during the year? I promise I will put down some lighter ones next year. I hope I will manage to find them.