5 Beautiful Passages from Books

Books are filled with beauty. From short story anthologies and poetry anthologies all the way through the longest novels ever written. There is normally something that we can find that is beautiful to us. Maybe it is a character, or a theme, or something we relate to. But in this article, I want to show you how beautiful language can be and how beautifully novels can be written.

Hopefully, this will allow you to appreciate more books further into literature and even though you do not necessarily have to read the whole book, there is definitely something that could make you find the language uses of these passages to be something incredible.

All I ask is that you consider the passages.

They are in no particular order.

5 Beautiful Passages from Books

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

I was a teenager when I read this and I can still remember in the car that my mum was shouting at me to put my book down as she had this weird belief that you would get motion sickness when reading in a car. This may have been true but not for me. I continued reading - I simply couldn't put the book down and this passage is only one of the reasons why.

“Perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.”

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

I read it when I was 16 and since then, it has been one of my favourite books of all time, Cloud Atlas quite literally changed my life. The book was amazing and in all respects, so was the film. The way the book was changed for the movie to be adapted was actually pretty alright. But I still love the book in so many more ways, there is just something about that book which always leaves you feeling complete, no matter how many times you read it.

“People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.”

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I waited way too long to read this. It entered my TBR list when I was around fourteen and I did not actually get around to reading it until I was about two months away from turning eighteen. When I say that this book broke my heart into pieces and then continued to smash it violently, I think that is probably as hurtful as it gets - especially concerning the child. That child. To this day, I have yet to read anything that hurt more than this book though I have since read books that hurt just as much.

“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Like War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov and also just like In Search of Lost Time, I became obsessed with really long books when I was in my late teens and so, I bought lots of notebooks - one for each book. With these, I would read a chapter, scribble some notes and link characters together - keeping lists of them in the back of each notebook. By far, one of my favourites had to be Anna Karenina because of its brilliance when it comes to the understanding of love and hatred.

“He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognising in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken.”

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

Someone recommended this to me online whilst I was studying for my undergraduate degree and though this book is for teenagers, I didn't really care - I was going to read it anyway. My gosh does this book blow your mind! Filled with beautiful passages on a person's capacity for love and care, true affection and the inability to love anyone else, this book really does give you all the 'feelings' you can possibly feel.

"This was what was wrong with me. All this time I had been trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been so close and yet I'd always fought them without even knowing it. From the minute I'd met Dante, I had fallen in love with him. I just didn't let myself know it, think it, feel it. My father was right. And it was true what my mother said. We all fight our own private wars."

Conclusion

I will do another one of these sooner or later because there are so many great passages and books I want to share with you. But for now, these are the ones that came to my mind as I was writing. I tried to give you a range of books so that hopefully, you will choose to read at least one of them. Happy reading if you do!