Favourite quote from any book.

[bethanwy]

"Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?"

Nothing beats that.

[rats_rox]

I second that! Although the last paragraph of NL comes very close!

[Riali]

"I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible."
Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen

"If a fairy was really-truly, it couldn't be a fairy, now could it?"
Emily of New Moon, LM Montgomery

And, as has been said, pretty much all of Le Petit Prince and THHGG.

[furbaby]

I like this:

"Do any of us, except in our dreams, truly expect to be reunited with our hearts’ deepest loves, even when they leave us only for minutes, and on the most mundane of errands? No, not at all. Each time they go from our sight we in our secret hearts count them as dead. Having been given so much, we reason, how could we expect not to be brought as low as Lucifer for the staggering presumption of our love?"

[Mockingbird]

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.

[Aletheia Dolorosa]

I apologise for the length. I write down my favourite quotes in a quotes book, and I only recently opened it again...

A man who cannot draw strength from himself, but only from litanies and anthems, is far more dangerous than one who after reading a handbook thinks he can drive a car or plane.

Obviously Mihály Ursi had committed a serious blunder in staying alive - at least as far as his political career was concerned - because had he fallen victim to the Nazis, it is certain that Bear Avenue would still be Mihály Ursi Avenue. Since then it had unobtrusively become Gurkin Avenue. Great political changes show extraordinary fondness and reverence for the dead. Less for the living. Heroic resistance in the living is not always a merit; in most cases it is a dangerous stigma. Those who at some time have resisted are tainted by the eternal stigma that somewhere, for something, they will again resist, because resistance lies in their nature, like some grave flaw of character.

People who read are always a little like you. You can't just tell them, you have to tell them why.

Let the young sing sounds of death. They are stupid. The finest thing under the sun and the moon is the human soul. I marvel at the small miracles of kindness that pass between humans, I marvel at the growth of conscience, at the persistence of reason in the face of all superstition and despair. I marvel at human endurance.

I remember that a long time ago, Armand told me that he asked Lestat, "How will I ever understand the human race?" Lestat said, "Read or see all the plays of Shakespeare and you will know all you ever need to know about the human race." Armand did it. He devoured the poems, he sat through the plays, he watched the brilliant new films with t Lawrence Fishburne and Kenneth Brannagh and Leonardo DiCaprio. And when Armand and I last spoke together, this is what he said of his education: "Lestat was right. He gave me not books but a passage into understanding. This man writes" - and I quote both Armand and Shakespeare now as Armand spoke it, as I will to you - as if it came from my heart:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps into this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle.
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
"This man writes this," said Armand to me, "and we know that it is absolutely and utterly the truth and every revelation has sooner or later fallen before it, and yet we want to love the way he has said it, we want to hear it again! We want to remember it! We want never to forget a single word."

[Dismantle the Sun]

It was recently mentioned, but it really is so awesome it has to be mentioned again...

Does the walker choose the path, or the path choose the walker?

And then there's Animal Farm. The first one is quite popular, but the second one won't mean much if you hadn't read the book. I thought it was one of the most powerful ending statements I've ever read, though. And I apologise if they're not exact, it's from memory.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

The creatures outside looked from man to pig, and from pig to man, and from man to pig again; but already it was impossible to tell which was which.

[Bellerophon]

The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
---A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf

Saw a pretty girl reading that on the Metro today. She was concentrating adorably and it was difficult not to stare. Hot literature.

"They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"

On the Road, Jack Kerouac.

I didn't like the book much, but that quote's a winner.

[brynjarbjorn]

One quote from the book I'm currently reading, although I can't say it's a favorite over the other great ones I've encountered :

"It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things." -Terry Pratchett, Jingo

[SilentSlide]

I was just browsing this thread after starting to re-read Brave New World (Huxley), and this one came back to me:

'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.'
'In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.'
'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.'
There was a long silence.
'I claim them all,' said the savage at last.

[eggnostic]

Favorite quote from any book, perhaps not, the book I am currently reading, yes.

Free Fall By William Golding

"God----"
Smack!
"--is----"
Smack!
"---love"
Smack! Smack! Smack!

[TheKnifeBearer]

Very short but to the point,

"Expect the Unexpected" - S.T.A.R.S Motto, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Conspiracy

[Zealous Monk]

Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall

Maybe not my favorite, but its hard to choose you know.

[Silversnake]

and "The world is quiet here" from SoUE

agreed

[AncientOfDays]

'The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day.'
'It MUST come sometimes to "jam to-day,"' Alice objected.
'No, it can't,' said the Queen. 'It's jam every OTHER day: to-day isn't any OTHER day, you know.'
'I don't understand you,' said Alice. 'It's dreadfully confusing!'

From Through the Looking Glass

"Jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day" basically means "a pleasant event in the future, which is never likely to materialize".

[Valrad]

Couple of quotes from Mistborn, The Final Empire.

“You see the dilemma?” Ham asked.
“I see an idiot,” Breeze mumbled

Breeze snorted. “Be warned—Hammond does tend to be a bit optimistic about these kinds of things. If the army were made up of one-legged mutes, he would praise their balance and their listening skills.”