Favorite Classics

I have read a lot of boring classics, and a lot of fantastic classics over the years. Here is a list that are (in my opinion) not boring, and very well written. Some are more modern and popular than others, but if you are looking for a classic of any sort, all of these are at the top of my list.

My Antonia: Willa Cather "There was nothing but land; not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made."

To Kill a Mockingbird: Harper Lee "It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived. "

Jane Eyre: Charlotte Bronte "I am no bird, and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will."

Hamlet: William Shakespeare "This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not be false to any man."

Great Expectations: Charles Dickens "No man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner... no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself."

The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald "I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything…Sophisticated - God, I'm sophisticated."

Catch-22: Joseph Heller "Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them."

Frankenstein: Mary Shelley "I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other."

The Count of Monte Cristo: Alexander Dumas "He felt he had passed beyond the bounds of vengeance, and that he could no longer say, “God is for and with me.”

The Scarlet Letter: Nathaniel Hawthorne "A pure hand needs no glove to cover it."

Anna Karenina: Leo Tolstoy "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Walden: Henry David Thoreau "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Little Women: Louisa May Alcott "If we are all alive ten years hence, let's meet, and see how many of us got our wishes, or how much nearer we are then than now."

Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen "A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment."

Mrs. Dalloway: Virginia Woolf "Still, one got over things. Still, life had a way of adding day to day."

1984: George Orwell "Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for awhile, even years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."