3 Classic Literary Quotes That Are Still Relevant Today
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Have you ever stumbled across a passage while reading that almost perfectly describes your life or a situation playing out in society? That is one of the delights of literature: how it can shed light on reality while our life experiences can bring understanding to our reading of a story.
Here are three classic quotations that seem especially suited to our day and time.
“Life is easy to chronicle but bewildering to practice.” — A Room with a View (by E. M. Forster)
This quote, written in the early 1900s, is an apt description of twenty-first century life relative to social and news media. How easy it is to chronicle and curate one’s daily activities, thoughts, and monumental moments for others’ consumption,that is, to post a proverbial “highlight reel” of one’s life on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. The engagements and weddings, the graduations, grand vacations, and baby announcements.
These special times are important memories to share with loved ones. Yet, everyone knows that no person’s social media posts are the sum total of his or her life. In reality, life is much messier, more beautiful, and more bewilderingly uncertain than our chosen profile pictures and posts convey.
On the flip side of this, it is also too easy to reduce life to everything that is difficult and tragic. Misfortune and suffering are typically what is chronicled and emphasized in the news media: inflation and economic woes, war and crime, political corruption and polarization, disease and natural disasters, the list is interminable.
All of this is a horrid and consequential part of reality but it is not all of it. In the midst of pain and adversity, there is goodness and hope. There are people helping friends and strangers. There is reconciliation and reunion from estrangement. There is healing of bodies and spirits. And there are those “highlight reel” moments of celebrations and festivities.
Forster’s quote captures a truth of being human that we would do well to remember: living life means experiencing the good, the bad, and the mundane and that is both bewildering and wonderful.
“For, after all, the person who has contracted debts must pay them.” — Persuasion (by Jane Austen)
We hear a great deal of talk nowadays regarding national debt, student debt, credit card debt, etc. Thank goodness, gone are the days of debtors’ prisons, but nevertheless, debt of one kind or another is seemingly an inevitable part of modern life.
Many opinions pertaining to debt and its fulfillment or forgiveness are bandied about by politicians and news pundits, but Regency Era Jane Austen puts it simply and, therefore, best: if you have a debt, you must be willing to pay it.
In today’s world of instant gratification, Austen’s statement is beneficial to heed. We need to think responsibly before contracting debt and decide if the investment is worth the long-term commitment and sacrifice.
“I’d rather take coffee than compliments right now.” — Little Women (by L. M. Alcott)
People seem to have an obsession with coffee these days. Quips about coffee are on T-shirts, mugs, and decorative signs. Coffee shops, be they local or part of a corporate chain, are plentiful in nearly every town and city. Whether it’s bitter, black and piping hot or iced and brimming with sugary flavorful creamers, countless people need their daily dose of coffee.
It’s thus somewhat comforting and amusing to note that in Alcott’s time of the 19th century, coffee still was placed on a pedestal, even over and above an ego-flattering compliment.
(As a fun fact and traveling back farther in time than Alcott, Johann Sebastian Bach composed a comical “Coffee Cantata” in the 1730s, satirizing a dependence on this caffeinated beverage.)
No matter the century, coffee seemingly reigns as beverage king. Long live the coffee bean!
In short…
It is certainly one of the perks of reading to unearth that perfect quote that feels as if it were written for you and your time.
