Quotations and Literature Forum

Hi!

I've read books such as Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm that I think have some really amazing things to say about people and human nature. I've also recently come across Wilfred Owen's poem "Dulce et decorum est" which I think is so brilliant - the last few lines are, I find, particularly effective!

If anyone has any ideas on other things I should read that are in a similar vein, please let me know!!

Thanks!

Hope to hear from you all soon!!

Alex

Ohhhh! My minds just gone blank! lol and i no so many...... ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

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You can not have rainbows in your soul without tears in your eyes

if you want books that focus on war and the human condition, i recommend cat and mouse by gunter grass. it follows a group of german youths (some who are jewish) during world war two. it really focuses more on the kids rather than the war, though, which i liked, but may not help you.

Thanks!

I'll see if I can get hold of it! I don't need it for anything other than my own "reading pleasure", if you will , so I'm sure it'll be of help!

thanks again for the suggestion!

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I am not young enough to know everything.
- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

...He may not be, but I am! ;P

Well the best book I have ever read that related to war and human nature would be All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque... it is about WW1 from a German boy's point of view.. by boy I mean young man.. 20 or so years old.. but in so many ways he is young and in so many ways he is old... this quote might help to explain what i mean by that... " We shift around a bit, then lie down again to play cards. Because that is what we are good at; playing cards, swearing and making war. Not much for twenty years - too much for twenty years" also this quote "We are like children who have been abandoned and we are as experienced as old men, we are coarse, unhappy and superficial - I think that we are lost." The book is a lot about what happend to people during the war.. and I don't mean action wise tho there is a lot of that but the way people change and also the ways they don't change... "We are no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conqure the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. we were 18 years old, we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progres. We don't believe in those things anymore; we believe in the war." those are just three amazing quotes that relate to life and human nature but there are so many more in this book it is a gripping story that is heart braking at the same time for me was enlightening... but I don't really want to sound like a book critique... lol so i will leave it at that.... If there was only one book about human nature and war that I could recommend it would be that one... sorry for going on so long lol.

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"A closed mind errects stubborn barriers, but against such barriers, words are formidable weapons" Brian Herbert, Keven Anderson

Some interesting books about human nature, I think are.

Adventures In Contentment, by David Grayson

Adam and the Sperpent, by Vardis, Fisher

The Elements, by Morgan Llywelyn

Morpho Eugenia (very different and interesting, though a bit tidious at times), by A.S. Byatt

and a book I am in the process of reading which seems to touch on aspects both of human nature and war

Rebel Heiress, by Robert Neill

and as far as poetry is converned, I am reading a collection of poems which are mainly about war, the book of pomes is called

The Years Between and Poems from History, by Rudyard Kipling

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Every man carries a circle of hell around his head like a halo. Every man, every man has to go through hell to reach his paradise.
Robert De Niro, Cape Fear