“Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.”

“The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world.”

— Oscar Wilde《The Picture of Dorian Gray》

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?”

— Jane Austen《Pride and Prejudice》

“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”

— Oscar Wilde《The Picture of Dorian Gray》

“Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all.”

— Jane Austen《Pride and Prejudice》

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald《The Great Gatsby》

“But Friendship is a noble thing-- Of Friendship it is good to sing, For truly when a man shall end, He lives in memory of his friend Who doth his better part recall And of his faults make funeral!”

— Arthur Stringer《The Prairie Wife》

“Alas howe my soule and bodye were lothe to leaue one an another, the sorrowe whereof made me vnwilling to intertaine so cruel an enemy as death: whereupon I plucking vp a good heart, thought thus.”

— Francesco Colonna《Hypnerotomachia Poliphili》

“He knew by his own experience how possible it was to hope against hope, and to hope unconsciously; and he could not bear that her heart should be crushed as his had been by the knowledge of the truth.”

— Mary Elizabeth Braddon《Lady Audley's Secret》

“An unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted object of fear to a young woman privately bred; and the figure that faced me was—a few more seconds assured me—as little anyone else I knew as it was the image that had been in my mind.”

— Henry James《The Turn of the Screw》

“Call me Ishmael.”

— Herman Melville《Moby-Dick》

“She is a good and pure woman, and I love her as a man might love an angel.”

— Arnold Bennett《The Grand Babylon Hotel》

“To people of her blood, liberty is everything, and they would set a town on fire to save themselves one day in prison.”

— Prosper Mérimée《Carmen》