Literature Group: What’s My Line?

What’s My Line?

For the October meeting we are asking members to come armed with a favourite quotation or two. Many thanks for the idea to Mike Shankland, who explains the concept:

I love the quote from Act 3 of The Merchant of Venice:

“Here are a few of the unpleasantest words

That ever blotted paper.”

Nevertheless, we all have lines which chime with our lives, growing in significance as the years pass. A chat up line I first used at 18 still works for me!

“Hade we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.”

And when I was a kid Horatio got my attention:

“Lars Porsena of Clusium,

By the Nine Gods he swore

That the great house of Tarquin

Should suffer wrong no more.”

I didn’t know a Tarquin from a penguin but I was caught up in the drama, and we all agree with Jane Austen: ‘The sooner every party breaks off the better’, and with Saul Bellow: ‘If I am out of my mind it’s all right with me.’

Now I won’t quote any more ( and these aren’t necessarily my favourite quotes) but would you like to bring a ‘mighty line’ or two and explain briefly what they mean to you?

If you are very brave you could write the quote on a piece of paper and the group could try to guess who chose that example.

Just a bit of autumnal fun!