Favorite Quotes

These have nothing to do with Snape, but some are hauntingly related to the type of life he does lead -- one of discipline and honor. These are my favorites. I am not making any implications as to Snape's character with these quotes. Any comments, or additions, email me.

"Il dort. Quoique le sort fût pour lui bien étrange
Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n'eut plus son ange.
La chose simplement d'elle- même arriva,
Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s'en va."
[He is asleep. Though his mettle was sorely tried,
He lived, and when he lost his angel, died.
It happened calmly, on its own,
The way night comes when day is done.] Les Misérables

"It is not enough to be happy, we must be satisfied with ourselves." Les Misérables

"Yes! I am informed against! yes!I am pursued! yes! I am hunted? By whom? by myself. It is I myself who bar the way before myself, and I drag myself, and I urge myself, and I check myself, and I exert myself, and when one holds himself he is well held." Les Misérables

"If we wish to happy, monsieur, we must never comprehend duty; for, as soon as we comprehend it, it is implacable. One would say that it punishes you for comprehending it; but no, it rewards you for it; for it puts you into a hell where you feel God by your side. Your heart is not so too lacerated when you are at peace with yourself." Les Misérables

"There is a silence which lies." Les Misérables

"Il faut avoir beaucoup étudi pour savoir peur." Montesquieu [One needs to study much to know little.]

"He was so perplexed by the the enigma that fate had touched him with that he kept falling into lyrical distractions that ran contrary to the rigor of his profession. Most of all he never thought it legitimate that life should make use of so many coincidences forbidden literature, so that there should be the untrammeled fulfillment of a death so clearly foretold." Chronicle of a Death Foretold,

"And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept. For there were no more worlds to conquer." via Die Hard but I'm sure someone really said this.

"Ipsa scientia potestas est." Francis Bacon.[Knowledge itself is power].

"We each live our mental life in a prison-house from which there is no escape." Sir James Jeans.

"History is a great nightmare from which I'm trying to awake." James Joyce

"Everybody's life pivots on one or maybe two moments. I had my moment this morning." The Caine Mutiny

"The only good is knowledge; the only evil is ignorance." Socrates

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturequeness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand." Brave New World

" Happiness is a hard master--particularly other people's happiness. A much harder master, if one isn't conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth." Brave New World.

"Anything you don't understand is magic." Mr. Bobbitt, my former Trigonometry teacher.

" ' There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.'
' Two, at least,' I said, 'for the fortunate.' " Wide Sargasso Sea

"I shall never understand why, suddenly, bewilderingly, I was certain that everything I had imagined to be truth was false. Only the magic and the dream are true -- all the rest's a lie. Let it go. Here's the secret. Here.
(But it is lost, that secret, and those who know it cannot tell it.)" Wide Sargasso Sea

" ' The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them.' " A Farewell to Arms

" He had always known what I did not know, and what, when I learned it, I was always able to forget. But I did not know that then, although I learned it later." A Farewell to Arms

"And when you are disbelieved you begin somehow to accommodate, to fit the accusation: not to believe yourself." July's People

" 'If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must be secret to keep them so. That has been the task of my kindred, while the years have lengthened and the grass grows long.' " The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

"Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not to eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends." The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

" 'It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.' " The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

" ' I know such things happened, but I cannot see them. No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fails.' " The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King