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A realistic guide to must read classics
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items if you’re looking to hit up some classics that still resonate with the way the world is today, this is the list for you. favorite quotes included to convince you they’re worth reading. ❤️
“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel - ‘Thou mayest’ - that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’ - it is also true that ‘Thou mayest no...
East of Eden by John Steinbeck, Paperback
“You said I killed you - haunt me then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I...
Wuthering Heights (Wordsworth Classics)
“'What is Optimism?' asked Cacambo - 'Alas!' said Candide, 'it is the mania for insisting that all is well when all is by no means well.”
(side note: there are a variety of translations for this one, but I linked my favorite, which also includes fun...
Candide - Voltaire: Books
“It is enough for me to be sure that you and I exist in this moment.”
(this book is gorgeous and magical, but you’re going to want to take notes on the family tree. so many people have the same name.)
One Hundred Years of Solitude: Classic Novel
“He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.”
(please review content warnings for this one)
Love in the Time of Cholera (Oprah's Book Club)
“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
(this book encouraged a hedonistic phase right when I was entering college, so you can imagine how well that went… which was not well, considering ...
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
(basically live tweeted this book when I first read it in 2013. would prob still do that now idc.)
Brave New World: 9780060850524: Huxley, Aldous: Books
"There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."
(bc what is truly better than adv...
The Hobbit: The Classic Fantasy Novel and Prelude to The Lord of the Rings: ...
“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for...
The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin Classics)
“Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.”
(a quicker read, but alarmingly accurate considering i...
Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury: 9781451673319
“It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.”
(lingo takes a hot sec to get used to, but is a quick read and then you can watch Kubrick’s movie, which feels like a fever dream but def good adaptation.)
A Clockwork Orange: Burgess, Anthony: 9780393341768
“And so it goes…”
(so many things to say about this one. Chiodos fan? their song title ‘teeth the size of piano keys’ was inspired by lines in this book. so many other quotes - “everything was beautiful and nothing hurt” - from this novel. a must re...
Slaughterhouse-Five: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: 9780385365130