The best lines from classical literature

Fans of the classics will love this collection curated by the Greatess review team.

“Do you know—I hardly remembered you?”

“Hardly remembered me?”

“I mean: how shall I explain? I—it’s always so. Each time you happen to me all over again.”

Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

In his deepest heart there surge tremendous shame and madness mixed with sorrow and love whipped on by frenzy and a courage aware of its own worth.

Virgil, The Aeneid

So, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise.

William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

I was filled with such a dangerous delicious intoxication that I could have walked straight off the steps into the air, climbing on the strength of my own drunkenness into the stars. And the intoxication, as I knew even then, was the recklessness of infinite possibility, of danger, the secret ugly frightening pulse of war itself, of the death that we all wanted, for each other and for ourselves.

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

I remember that I am invisible and walk softly so as not to awaken the sleeping ones.

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

As I made my way home, I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn’t much else for us to learn, except possibly algebra.

Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

Both of them remained floating in an empty universe where the only everyday and eternal reality was love.

Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

And, just for good measure, here are a handful of runners up: For now the seventh summer carries you, A wanderer, across the lands and waters.

Virgil, The Aeneid

You are never to stir out of doors till you can prove that you have spent ten minutes of every day in a rational manner.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

For plenty more classical literature and podcasts, check out the curated collection at Greatess.