Quotes from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

“She glided away towards the lift, which seemed hardly needed, with its earthly and mechanical paraphernalia, to bear her up to the higher levels.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

“In fact, she [Pamela Flitton] seemed to prefer 'older men' on the whole, possibly because of their potentiality for deeper suffering. Young men might superficially transcend their seniors in this respect, but they probably showed less endurance in sustaining that state, while, once pinioned, the middle-aged could be made to writhe almost indefinitely.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

“In the seven years or so that had passed since I had last seen him, Sir Magnus Donners had grown not so much older in appearance, as less like a human being.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

“There could be no doubt, so I was finally forced to decide, that the longer one dealt with them, the more one developed the habit of treating generals like members of the opposite sex; specifically, like ladies no longer young, who therefore deserve extra courtesy and attention; indeed, whose every whim must be given thought.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

“Jeavon's thick dark hair, with its ridges of corkscrew curls, had now turned quite white, the Charlie Chaplin moustache remaining black. This combination of tones for some reason gave him an oddly Italian appearance, enhanced by blue overalls, obscurely suggesting a railway porter at a station in Italy.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

“Esteem for the army - never in this country regarded, in the continental manner, as a popular expression of the national will - implies a kind of innocence.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

“The army is at once the worst place for egoists, and the best.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

“That was a good straightforward point of view, no pretence that games were anything but an outlet for power and aggression; no stuff about their being enjoyable as such. You played a game to demonstrate that you did it better than someone else. If it came to that, I thought how few people do anything for its own sake, from making love to practising the arts.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

“Bring a torch, if you've got one. It's as dark as hell and stinks of something far worse than cheese.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

“Entering the front door, you were at once assailed by a nightmare of cheerlessness and squalor, all the sordid melancholy, at its worst, of any nest of bedrooms where only men sleep;”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

“His woolly grey hair, short thick body, air of perpetual busyness, suggested an industrious gnome conscripted into the service of the army; a gnome who also liked to practise considerable malice against the race of men with whom he mingled, by making as complicated as possible every transaction they had to execute through himself.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

“Short, square, cleanshaven, his head seemed carved out of an elephant's tusk, the whole massive cone of ivory left more or less complete in its original shape, eyes hollowed out deep in the roots, the rest of the protuberance accommodating his other features, terminating in a perfectly colossal nose that stretched directly forward from the totally bald cranium. The nose was preposterous, grotesque, slapstick, a mask from a Goldoni comedy.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

About the author

Popular quotes

“He’s the one ought to have his head examined.”
― Gennifer Choldenko, quote from Al Capone Does My Shirts

“Selfishly, perhaps, Catti-brie had determined that the assassin was her own business. He had unnerved her, had stripped away years of training and discipline and reduced her to the quivering semblance of a frightened child. But she was a young woman now, no more a girl. She had to personally respond to that emotional humiliation, or the scars from it would haunt her to her grave, forever paralyzing her along her path to discover her true potential in life.”
― R.A. Salvatore, quote from Streams of Silver

“president's brilliant theory of vending his wares direct to the people—was perhaps the only one who had suspicions. He had once written a brilliant criticism to some inquirer, in which he had said that no enterprise of such magnitude as the Northern Pacific had ever before been entirely dependent upon one house, or rather upon one man, and that he did not like it. "I am not sure that the lands through which the road runs are so unparalleled in climate, soil, timber, minerals, etc., as Mr. Cooke and his friends would have us believe. Neither do I think that the road”
― Theodore Dreiser, quote from The Financier

“The hundred possibilities a situation contains may be more significant than the occurrence of any of them, and metaphor truer in the long run than fact.”
― David Malouf, quote from Johnno

“Buckets,' said Cimorene. 'Lots of buckets, and soap, and lemon juice. Where do you keep your buckets, Mendanbar?'
'Around somewhere,' Mendanbar said vaguely.”
― Patricia C. Wrede, quote from Searching for Dragons

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.