In His Last Bow, one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, there’s a scene that I particularly enjoyed.
At the end Holmes addresses his good friend Dr. Watson with these words, “There’s an east wind coming, Watson.”
To which Watson replies, “I think not, Holmes. It is very warm.”
And Holmes concludes with, “Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared. Start her up, Watson, for it’s time that we were on our way. I have a check for five hundred pounds which should be cashed early, for the drawer is quite capable of stopping it if he can.”
The story is set in 1914, on the eve of the First World War, and it adds an ominous tone to the century that brought a wave of technology and innovation, but ultimately destroyed the lives of many during two conflagrations.
In the movie Sherlock Holmes they use this line at the end, but change it a bit. “A storm is coming,” says Sherlock Holmes as an actual storm is sluggishly settling over London. To be honest, that scene gave me the chills. It was a beautiful reference to both Doyle’s short stories and to the War itself.
Another personal favorite is a scene from The Great Gatsby.
"Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high. "I've got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall." He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher--shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily. "They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such--such beautiful shirts before."
Some scenes stick with us for no apparent reason. We don’t know why, but we love them. What is your favorite scene?
Quite interesting.
Following on from a theme from today, expressed rather more poetically than my own
These are both great scenes.
I like a great many, but the scenes that tend to stick for me are action scenes. "Get away from her you b!tch", "No Luke, I am your father", "There's a bad storm coming" last one from Terminator as well as a great many other films.
Too many to count, but superlative writing elevates every scene.
This is probably cliche, but I love the last scene of "A Tale of Two Cities." Still sends a chill down my spine. :)
I like your way of bringing in passages from books and explaining them with real life events. It a way of reminding people to read.
"Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of a true, wise friend called Piggy." Out of everything that happened in Lord of the Flies, this sentence is what has always stuck with me. I read the book at sixteen, loved it, and I remember my thoughts stumbling over each other to take pause and measure the full value of the words. I love that moment when the entire meaning of a thing falls neatly into place.
Beautiful!
One of my favorite portions of literature are the opening lines to Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God". Here they are:
"Ships at a distance have every man's dreams on board. For some they come in on the tide. For some they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men."
By the way, I'm enjoying your blog very much.
if you like Holmes, you should check out a series by August Derleth, The Adventures of Solar Pons, it is the best of all the Sherlockian stories that I have read. There are a lot of knock offs, but this one remains true to Doyle's style so much that its scary.
Two memorable scenes from Dostoevsky are the scene from The Gambler where Alexei meets Mr. Astley at the end, and the Ivan's dream in The Brothers Karamazov.
There are many favorite scenes that I have appreciated. One that sticks out in this minute is from "The Color Purple". She has had her entire life taken from her, through abuses in different forms. Finally, she finds her voice. Finally she can speak. At the end, she is finally able to escape a life with no love. A freedom.. It brings tears to my eyes as I see it in my mind. Another favorite, is when they are at the table. Oprah's part, she has been beaten down, imprisoned for so long she is crippled up, and has not been able to raise and love her kids. In a fraction of a second, God made Himself known through getting help in the store. At the table, she was able to say in that moment in the store, she knew..'there was a God'. Love that scene. Have lived those moments of freedom, and when God made Himself known to me.
Thanks for sharing this bit of information. Doyle is one of my favorite writers and not just for his Sherlock Holmes series. Have you read any of his other works?
Reblogged this on shafiqah1 and commented:
These two scenes are amazing, I love the Gatsby scene, but this is the first time I've been introduced to the Sherlock Holmes scene, a must read re-post, I think everyone will be left pondering :)
My favorite from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is: “Rochester: "Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation."
Jane: "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
This has happened in my own life and therefore has poignant meaning for me.
I read the Thorn Birds when I was all young and impressionable, and that story stayed with me since. I have gone back and read it a couple of times since, and as I have matured it tastes of nostalgia and sadness. As sappy and overdone as it may be, it still brings me back to being a teenager discovering the complexities of romance.
…A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
Lucifer in Hell speaking to fellow demons after being cast out of Heaven
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
They're both great scenes! But I must say, I adore Sherlock Holmes… What a man!
Thanks for sharing. One of my favorite reads is Scarlet Pimpernel. I've read it over and over that "demned elusive Pimpernel."
"Had she but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose-lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear-a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and his own despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love, and as soon as her light footstep had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade there, where her tiny hand had rested last."
- Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Ch. 16
I can';t help but enjoy everything you write
Current favorite is Robert Frobisher's last letter in Cloud Atlas which contains this passage: "A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty. 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. The only selfishness lies in ruining strangers' days by forcing 'em to witness a grotesqueness.” It's just so beautiful, I died a little when I read it. And that's a good thing.
Too many to list. I am very fond of the scene with Ivan Karamazov relating why he would return to God "his ticket"…also many scenes in some old science fiction, things from "Dune" and "Gameplayers of Zan", and from Doris Lessing books as well.
One scene that stuck with me is Toro in "Norwegian Wood" spend his sundays ironing his shirts. Strange really
You just made me want to reread these two classics again. :D My favourite scene…was from Great Expectations. The description of cobweb-filled wedding cake makes me go, "Why didn't the ants finish them? Was it awful?" :P
"Is he safe?"
"No, he's not safe, but he's good"
From Chronicles of Narnia, -CS Lewis.
(paraphrased from memory).
Mmm, that always stuck with me, too. Though I must say that, for me, the pages that stand shining above all other fiction are the final two of CS Lewis's The Last Battle.
"You are, as they call it in the shadow-lands, dead. The term had ended, the holiday has begun. The dream is over. It is morning." The quiet joy that builds through those words have always thrilled me, and it only gets better up to the end.
Enjoyed the Writer over the weekend!
I have got lots of memorable moments to go back to but I thought I'd share a favourite funny quote I remember from a Jilly Cooper novel (Riders). "I sent him out for a packet of Benson and Hedges and told him if he couldn't get those get me anything. The pillock brought me back a pork pie". I howled laughing at that the first time I read it and it still makes me chuckle now many years later.
Thanks for these wonderful quotes.
The Bishop giving Valjean the silver in Les Miserables always gets me. Great post, thank you.
Love the scene from "Unforgiven" after the Kid shoots Quick Mike in the outhouse and is getting drunk and feeling remorseful and looks to fellow assassin Munny, saying, "But he had it comin' didn't he?" And Munny says, "We've all got it coming!" One of the greatest lines ever.
I love reading Sherlock Holmes especially when the story line takes a twist or a turn I was not expecting. I try to do that in my writing as well. Just when the reader is getting comfortable with the events happening something unexpected happens that can attack all their emotions at once.When someone who is editing my work tells me that what I have written so drew them in that they were crying over the loss of a character, I know I have done my job as a writter.
"Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!" Last line in Dr. Strangelove. Improvised by Peter Sellers as the mad former Nazi scientist miraculously stands in the world;s final holocaust.. You laugh at/with Sellers and his spoof, and then with exploding nuke after exploding nuke to the tune of "We'll Meet Again" you stop laughing and realize, why, this isn't funny at all. Maybe not the favorite of mine, but one that has always stuck with me…
Great quotes- thanks, i looove Sherlock Holmes, am quite a nerd about it actually! I have recently been re-reading Kafka's The Trial, and can't get the scene, which is towards the end of the book, where he stumbles around in a dark church talking to the priest, out of my head. In fact I just can't seem to get Kafka out of my head! He has this insidious way of creeping into your mind, don;t you think?
I think there are writers like King and Ketchum who write about terrible things happening in a physical way… and then there's Kafka… who wrote about all that's greedy and dark inside the human soul. It's said that Kafka used to laugh so hard while he was writing that it would wake up the neighbors. He somehow considered his writings to be funny. Maybe it was a coping mechanism, maybe he saw the absurd nature of life… I don't know, but honestly to me it seems that Kafka is one of the most difficult writers to read and interpret.
I didn't know that about Kafka – strange guy that's for sure…I do enjoy reading him, but I'm not sure I would enjoy meeting him!
From the book of
Kare Kano vol 8 p105-106
I just wanted your light to shine on me so I don't get swallowed up by the darkness.
Crimson Hero vol 9 p40-41
If you hone your ability to track moving objects and concentrate as hard as you can, you can see everything as if time has stopped.
It is not a scene but a poem. The selection and combination of words never ceases to amaze me, by Emily Dickinson:
"After great pain a formal feeling comes–
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions–was it He that bore?
And yesterday–or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.
This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow–
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go."
…. This is the hour of lead!
Is it a beautiful to you?
Denise
PS: The Gatsby scene you shared is also unforgetable! Thank you!
Reblogged this on David Yoon.
From a book? Definitely the Mount Doom scene from the Return of the King. After thousands of pages of immensely absorbing imagery, characterisation, and challenges, you feel so absorbed in Frodo's struggle to destroy the Ring, and you realise that all this story has been leading up to the one moment where Frodo drops the Ring. I almost started to panic when I realised that it could have all been for nothing when Gollum got the Ring, but when Tolkien linked Gollum's hubris back into the story and made him fall into the pit, it was literally the best feeling I've ever had. Amazing :)
My favourite is George Eliot, Mill on the Floss ch15, on inequality (George Osborne please note):
"Snow lay on the croft and river-bank in undulations softer than the limbs of infancy; it lay with the neatliest finished border on every sloping roof, making the dark-red gables stand out with a new depth of color; it weighed heavily on the laurels and fir-trees, till it fell from them with a shuddering sound; it clothed the rough turnip-field with whiteness, and made the sheep look like dark blotches; the gates were all blocked up with the sloping drifts, and here and there a disregarded four-footed beast stood as if petrified “in unrecumbent sadness”; there was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow. But old Christmas smiled as he laid this cruel-seeming spell on the outdoor world, for he meant to light up home with new brightness, to deepen all the richness of indoor color, and give a keener edge of delight to the warm fragrance of food; he meant to prepare a sweet imprisonment that would strengthen the primitive fellowship of kindred, and make the sunshine of familiar human faces as welcome as the hidden day-star. His kindness fell but hardly on the homeless,—fell but hardly on the homes where the hearth was not very warm, and where the food had little fragrance; where the human faces had had no sunshine in them, but rather the leaden, blank-eyed gaze of unexpectant want. But the fine old season meant well; and if he has not learned the secret how to bless men impartially, it is because his father Time, with ever-unrelenting unrelenting purpose, still hides that secret in his own mighty, slow-beating heart."
"The shark swam out to his deepest waters and brooded in the old clean currents. He was very hungry that season." – A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
You almost have to read the entire book to understand it as I think Miller meant it. An arrow in a skull in a tomb on a tomb on a tomb on a tomb.
Well, there are so many that stay with me… but here's one that always fills me with a sense of relief and joy and sadness:
"In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.
Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say:
"That is a hat."
Then, I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man."
from Antoine De Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince
Yes, it is a beautiful moment ;0)
One of my current favourite books… and a passage that affected me also, having thought along similar lines about such things
This and all the comments just increase my appetite to read. Thank you all.
'………, it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on it's cover.' – Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
'Love is the threshold where divine and human presence ebb and flow into each other.' – Anam Cara by John O'Donohue
"Salvation" by Langston Hughes.
I remember reading it by accident in high school and being so … shocked that I sat still and dumb for about ten minutes just processing the whole thing.
It wasn't really about religion to me, it was more about growing up and facing reality. It was about the realization that the "pure" things in this world may not be as pure as we make it out to be. And the fear of being alone in a crowd, of being somehow left behind on some "great truth" was scarier than any Stephen King novel I had ever read.
"So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I’d better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved.
So I got up."
The Trespasser by D.H. Lawrence – the main character is having an affair with one of his students. He opens the front door of his home and sees the 6 pairs of shoes sitting at the door, his children's shoes, and feels the weight of his responsibilities.
- plus many other passages from Lawrence novels.
That is one book that has been on my "must read" list that I have never gotten around to.
My brother and I used to listen to Hank the Cow Dog on cassette when we were little, right before we went to sleep. The part that stuck with me to this day (for reason, I know not) was when Hank seeks out a porcupine, and gets needles all up in his nose.
I have no idea why, but the ending from Time Bandits always stuck with me as a kid. It still disturbs me to this day. Everything is ok, and then the child's parents die. The end.
my personal favorite Sherlock quote is :
'' My dear fellow,'' said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, '' life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are mere commonplaces of existence. (…) ''
Great post! His Last Bow is one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories next to The Valley of Fear.
These lines are from The Lonesome Gods by Louis L'Amour.
When we walked home that evening, Miss Nesselrode was silent until we were almost at the door. "You are quiet," she said. "Is something wrong?"
"It is never nice to realize one has been a fool," I said.
"If you have done something foolish and realize it, then you are not quite the fool you were," she said.
Not a novel (sorry) but the final scene from 'Withnail and I'. Shakespeare of course…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zEVZGuU3BU
Excellent bit of rambling, Cris! And certainly fodder for deep thinking…
Strangely enough, that Gatsby scene is probably my favourite part of a book ever. I have the quote written on a sticky note on the back wall of my closet. No idea why I love it though.
Great post.