The Spark of the Sublime

[sartorias]

beth_bernobich has an excellent idea today--posting paragraphs from favorite works. It's a pleasure to read her choices, as well as the ones posted by others. If you have a few moments to spare, go read--post yours.

I posted mine there, but I will here, too. It's the very last paragraph of Middlemarch:

"The effect of her being on those around her was

Comments

[asakiyume]

That quote from Middlemarch is very consoling; I like it very much.

Here's what I left on beth_bernobich's page. I didn't have a religious upbringing as a child, and this ended up being my personal creed. It's Puddleglum's speech to the witch in The Silver Chair:

"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all thoes things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in this case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of your is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if their isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as a like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."

[sartorias]

Oh, I hope that one makes it into the movie, but I doubt it will.

[intertext]

oh, my. I love that speech so much.

[asakiyume]

It was such an gift to read this, when I was however old I was when I first did. It both bolstered my wandering, incoherent faith, and it gave me a stoic way to carry on if there was nothing to believe in. How often does something do both thing? And express itself in a way that's intelligible to a child? A real gift.

[frumiousb]

that's lovely.

[mojave_wolf]

I almost certainly won't have time to look mine up today or tomorrow either, but I love this quote. And I'd never read Middlemarch, so, Thank you. =)

[sartorias]

It's a great book--but a long one.

[ex_fashioni]

I quoted lyrics today. Not quite the same, but they have the same effect on me. :-)

[sartorias]

Those were awesome lyrics, by the way.

[ex_fashioni]

I was explaining to a friend that I'm so completely musically hardwired, it's rare that I ever separate the lyrics and consider them outside the music. Or perhaps, better said, that the lyrics affect me on the same level as the music. Amy Winehouse is one. But Jason Mraz is my ultimate. He is just SO bloody brilliant with lyrics and wordplay and indeed, how he weaves the words with the music.

*le sigh*

[sartorias]

I wonder if musicians can be like writers...some are word persons, some artists. Because one can get powerful, thrunderstriking music with the most banal lyrics...or nifty lyrics with limp melodies.

Anyway, this guy seems like a poet.

[intertext]

This is such a lovely idea, and me so mired in marking that I don't have time to respond with a post of my own. I will later, though :) Thanks for the Middlemarch.

[sartorias]

*g*