... a dictionary of quotations.

[his] verse ... shall never need a hearse.

—John Suckling, of Virgil.

... a poem.

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.

—Tennyson, "Oenone."

... a biography.

Cervantes represented his hero as being two-thirds mad, which seems to me to detract from the work since madness is not a proper subject for drama because it robs the work of universality.

—John Stewart Collis, Christopher Columbus, p. 48 (of 208).

... a poem.

The body's pain is blister for the soul's.

—James Elroy Flecker, “Lucretia.”

... a Restoration drama.

Turn not to thought, my brain.

—Nicholas Rowe, The Fair Penitent, Act IV.

... the dictionary.

As painful as the violent discision of very Life would be could it be forcibly torn in pieces.

—George Rust, in Let. of Resol. conc. Origen & his Opinions, cited thus obscurely in the Oxford English Dictionary under the definition for "discission".

... a Restoration drama.

Duke of Gloster:
I will not dine before his head be brought me!

—Nicholas Rowe, The Tragedy of Jane Shore, Act IV.

... a Restoration drama.

But I'd forgo the hopes of a world's empire,
Rather than wound the bowels of my friend.

—Thomas Otway, Venice Preserved, II.iii.

... a closet drama.

A local thing called Christianity ...
Beyond whose reach, uninfluenced, unconcerned,
The systems of the suns go sweeping on
With all their many-mortaled planet train
In mathematic roll unceasingly.

—Thomas Hardy, The Dynasts, I.vi.

... a novel.

He had an air of having wallowed, fully dressed, all day on an unmade bed.

—Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent, page two, basically.

... some rhymes.

‘How do you do?’ Will asked of me.
‘Very well, thanks,’ said I. Said he,
‘Yes, I invariably find
Abundant health in all mankind.’

Next morning, ‘How d’you do?’ asked Will.
I said that I was rather ill.
‘Alas,’ his voice tolled like a bell,
‘Mankind was ever far from well.’

—Max Beerbohm, "Lines on a certain Friend’s remarkable Faculty for swift Generalization."

... an Oxford love story.

“I had never known the rapture of being in love. I had longed for it, but I had never guessed how wonderfully wonderful it was. It came to me. I shuddered and wavered like a fountain in the wind. I was more helpless and flew lightlier than a shred of thistledown among the stars.”

—Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, p. 37 (of 252).

... the dictionary.

Intelligence which is overproud of itself belies itself.

—Philosophical and Phenomenological Research, 10:8, 1949; sample sentence for entry "overproud" in the Oxford English Dictionary.

... a proem.

Give my words immortal charm.

—Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, invocation to Venus, Book I, translated by William Ellery Leonard.

Another fusty translation, that of H. A. J. Munro, gives this as, "Lend my lays an everliving charm." Tee hee!

... a novel.

“No one grows up. That’s one of the sickest lies they ever tell you. People change. People compromise. People get stranded in situations they don’t want to be in ... and they make the best of it. But don’t try to tell me it’s some kind of ... glorious preordained ascent into emotional maturity. It’s not.”

I said uneasily, “Has something happened? Between you and Lisa?”

“No. Everything’s fine. Life is wonderful. I love them all. But ...” He looked away, his whole body visibly tensing. “Only because I’d go insane if I didn’t. Only because I have to make it work. And it’s not even that hard, anymore. It’s pure habit. But ... I used to think there’d be more. I used to think that if you changed from ... valuing one thing to valuing another, it was because you’d learned something new, understood something better. And it’s not like that at all. I just value what I’m stuck with. That’s it, that’s the whole story. People make a virtue out of necessity. They sanctify what they can’t escape.”

—Greg Egan, Distress, p. 69 of 342.

... a novel.

He would have liked to tell her in his own way how lovely he thought she was, and why he thought so, and to make her understand how much more he wanted from her than she was used to having men want.

—Paul Bowles, Let It Come Down.

... a treatise on trees.

The trees are fountains that invisibly spray the heavens with their exhaust.

—John Stewart Collis, The Triumph of the Tree.

... a lecture.

We shall all agree, but we shall voice our assent in different tones, and it is on the precise tone of voice we employ now that our subsequent conclusions will depend.

—E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, chapter 2. Slightly abridged.

... a play.

Queen Mother: Too true ’tis, woe is me.
I am a strumpet, but made so by thee.

—Pseudo-Marlowe, Lust’s Dominion, I.i.

... a novel.

These memories rehearsed themselves tediously and inexorably in Colmore's mind like the repertoire of a neighbouring amateur musician.

—Roy Fuller, The Father's Comedy, p. 66.

... a fable.

"You shall have an ample share of my dainties."

—Aesop, "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse," translated by George Fyler Townsend.

... a tragedy.

Andromache: I would be worthy to be Hector's wife;
And had I been a man, as my Soul's one,
I had aspired a nobler name—his friend.

—John Dryden's Troilus and Cressida, II.i.

... a guide to our future.

An economy based on information, with its tendency to zero-cost products and weak property rights, cannot be a capitalist economy.

—Paul Mason, Postcapitalism, p. 175.

... a novel.

"What's it like to spend a night with a woman?"

"Marvelous. It's as though the night was colored, instead of being black—something between pink and blue. In the morning you think you're waking up in a meadow. The day begins with a taste of honey."

—Marcel Aymé, The Transient Hour, translated by Eric Sutton.

... an FAQ.

Make your HTML as simple as possible. HTML is an evolving standard, and one that may be completely obsolete in the long term. Use of advanced features may just mean that your version will be obsolete or unreadable that much faster.

—Project Gutenberg's HTML FAQ. By changing a few terms, one could modify this to excellent writing advice. The English language is evolving; it's dangerous to your prose's longevity to bet on today's slang being around tomorrow.

... a preface.

When we have what is called a popular movement very few people who take part in it know what it is all about. I once saw a real popular movement in London. People running excitedly through the streets. Everyone who saw them doing it immediately joined in the rush. They ran simply because everyone else was doing it. It was most impressive to see thousands of people sweeping along at full speed like that. There could be no doubt that it was literally a popular movement. I ascertained afterwards that it was started by a runaway cow. That cow had an important share in my education as a political philosopher; and I can assure you that if you will study crowds, and lost and terrified animals, and things like that, instead of reading books and newspaper articles, you will learn a great deal about politics from them. Most general elections, for instance, are nothing but stampedes.

—George Bernard Shaw, preface to The Apple Cart.

... an autobiographical novel.

Isn't life a story?

No. A story is arranged. Life is a file.

—Christine Brooke-Rose, Remake, p. 65.

... a Culture novel.

"Are you well enough to invigilate?"

"Fuck me, no; drunk as a desert spring."

—Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games, p. 54 of 391.

... a sci-fi novel.

"Ships have feelings."

"Yes, of course." Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It's just easier to handle those with emotions.

—Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice, chapter 6.

... the travel diary of a philosopher.

Why should a man be bad, however much he may lie and deceive? One must certainly take measures to protect oneself; one should not let oneself be deceived, and where the other party is too strong one should restrain him by law, so that authority shall render him harmless. But it is barbarous to judge a man's being by his actions. For who has got to the stage in which his actions are the complete expression of his soul? I have never seen such a man.

—Count Hermann Keyserling, The Travel Diary of a Philosopher, chapter 38. Translated by J. Holroyd Reece.

... the history of England.

His keen sensibility and his powerful imagination made his internal conflicts singularly terrible. Sometimes loud voices from heaven cried out to warn him. Sometimes fiends whispered impious suggestions in his ear. He saw visions of distant mountain tops, on which the sun shone brightly, but from which he was separated by a waste of snow. He felt the Devil behind him pulling his clothes. He thought that the brand of Cain had been set upon him. He feared that he was about to burst asunder like Judas. His mental agony disordered his health. One day he shook like a man in the palsy. On another day he felt a fire within his breast. It is difficult to understand how he survived sufferings so intense, and so long continued.

At length the clouds broke. From the depths of despair, the penitent passed to a state of serene felicity. An irresistible impulse now urged him to impart to others the blessing of which he was himself possessed.

—Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England, Chapter 7. This passage describes John Bunyan.

... a poem.

In the kitchen the sound of raspberries being mashed in the cream
Reminds you of your childhood and all the fantasies you had then!

—Kenneth Koch, "Hearing," from The Pleasures of Peace, 1969.

... a utopia.

Both Individualism and Socialism are, in the absolute, absurdities; the one would make men the slaves of the violent or rich, the other the slaves of the State official. The way of sanity runs, perhaps even sinuously, down the intervening valley.

—H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, 1905.

... an essay.

Our public schools and universities play the beneficent part in our social scheme that cattle do in forests: they browse the seedlings down and prevent the growth of all but the luckiest and sturdiest.

—Samuel Butler, "The Aunt, The Nieces, and The Dog," from Essays On Life, Art, and Science.

... a novel.

He felt how hard it was to be a secret agent, to go in disguise as a member of his own family, trying to so insinuate himself among them that, without his ever asking a question (that would expose him instantly) the truth would be spilled in his presence because they would have no reason to doubt he was already privy to it.

—John Crowley, Little, Big, p. 277.

... a review of a reviewer.

She seems at time to have a form of prose hypochondria, palpating herself all over to see if she has a thought, and publishing every word of the process by which she checks to see whether or not she has one ...

—Renata Adler, writing of Pauline Kael, in “House Critic,” The New York Review of Books, August 14, 1980.

... a personal philosophy.

The significant truth is not that you are lucky to have been born into one of the best—the richest or most powerful—countries; but that others are unlucky not to have been born into it. You are not a starving Indian peasant, but you might have been. That you are not is not a matter for self-congratulation, but one for charitable action, for concern. The proper domain for nationalism is art and culture; not politics.

—John Fowles, The Aristos, chap. 9.

... a novel.

... the instinct, or urge, or need, or whatever it was that impelled most boys and a good many grown men to climb things, to get as high as possible. There was a peculiar airy excitement in reaching for a branch or a foothold. And a thick pleasure flowed like syrup through the blood.

—Evan S. Connell, Mr. Bridge, 1969.

... a history.

It may at first sight seem strange that society, while constantly moving forward with eager speed, should be constantly looking backward with tender regret. But these two propensities, inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be resolved into the same principle. Both spring from our impatience of the state in which we actually are. That impatience, while it stimulates us to surpass preceding generations, disposes us to overrate their happiness. It is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful in us to be constantly discontented with a condition which is constantly improving. But, in truth, there is constant improvement precisely because there is constant discontent. If we were perfectly satisfied with the present, we should cease to contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to the future. And it is natural that, being dissatisfied with the present, we should form a too favourable estimate of the past.

—Thomas Macaulay, The History of England, Chapter 3.

... an impression or comment.

In every age, convention and the usage of dull formality are ever wearing away what is beautiful in speech. In every age the pioneer is called upon to penetrate daringly into the unknown and capture new shapes of loveliness, even though in doing so he cannot fail often to bring back what is trivial, banal, extravagant, absurd.

—Havelock Ellis, Impressions and Comments, 18 January 1922.

... an essay.

Mere legal enactments, enforced, or left unenforced, by paid officials or the police, to be effective must themselves become taboos, printed on the fleshy tablets of the individual citizen’s heart.

—Havelock Ellis, “The Function of Taboos,” from More Essays of Love and Virtue, 1931.