What's the Most Beautiful Thing You Have Ever Read?

What's the Most Beautiful Thing You Have Ever Read?

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

I'm sure no one is surprised to see a post about beautiful words. If there is one thing this blog is really, truly about, it's about rich words. So naturally, when this thread stumbled into my life so many moons ago, I began to think about my favorite words. After all, I do so much reading, I knew there must be many blocks of text in this world that had forever changed my consciousness as soon as they graced my eyes.

Well, it turns out I do have a lot of favorite quotes. Over the past 8 months I have been carefully curating some of my favorite literary excerpts to share. These little bits from the glorious chasm of the world's library have added just a little zest to my heart and pricked my eyes like sting of a raw onion. So here you go, a collection of joy and tears is my little gift to you today. Here are some of the most painfully beautiful moments I have ever seen in literature. Please, I do beg of you, share your own below in the comments.

“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby  

"And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby  

“Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the lane, ways that would not involve walking down our drive.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane 

“Listen, God love everything you love - and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration.

You saying God vain? I ast.

Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

What it do when it pissed off? I ast.

Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple 

“If you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you - you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe    

“Some people care too much. I think it's called love.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh 

  

“Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,' Holly advised him. 'That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's 

“The answer is good things only happen to you if you're good. Good? Honest is more what I mean... Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart.”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's 

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn    

And finally, one last little block from a stunningly beautiful book that I recently picked up on a whim.

"The war tried to kill us in the spring. As grass greened the plains of Nineveh and the weather warmed, we patrolled the low-slung hills beyond the cities and towns. We moved over them and through the tall grass on faith, kneading paths into the windswept growth like pioneers. While we slept, the war rubbed its thousand ribs against the ground in prayer. When we pressed onward through exhaustion, its eyes were white and open in the dark While we ate, the war fasted, fed by it's own deprivation. It made love and gave birth and spread through fire." 
― Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds

Of course, these are just a few of the most beautiful things in the world, all taken from stories I have personally read and loved. But now, I am curious. What is the most beautiful thing you have ever read?

Stay beautiful,

XOXO Liz

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