“You can't ever tell what's going to hurt people.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from A Handful of Dust
“It would be a dull world if we all thought alike.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from A Handful of Dust
“Brenda descended the great staircase step by step through alternations of dusk and rainbow.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from A Handful of Dust
“A whole Gothic world had come to grief...there was now no armour glittering through the forest glades, no embroidered feet on the green sward; the cream and dappled unicorns had fled...”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from A Handful of Dust
“A wonderfully congenial group who live by a unique set of social standards. According to their rules, any sin is acceptable provided it is carried off in good taste.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from A Handful of Dust
“He is well satisfied with his accommodation, which provides all modern amenities in a compact and convenient form, and leaves him the maximum amount of time free for his work. How much time people waste in walking from one room to another.... Space is time.”
― David Lodge, quote from Small World
“As the great William James put it almost 80 years ago: A man’s “Me” is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his mind, but his clothes and house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, his yacht and his bank-account (1892, p. 44). In other words, the human animal can be symbolically located wherever he feels a part of him really exists or belongs. This is important for an understanding of the bitter fighting between social classes for social status: an individual’s house in a posh neighborhood can be more a part of his self-image than his own arm—his life-pulse can be inseparable from it.”
― Ernest Becker, quote from The Birth and Death of Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem of Man
“But by nature, the human heart yearns most for what it cannot have.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Breathless
“You are my heart as it beats within my chest, my soul as it moves through my mind. The breath in my body that so fascinates you is your essence pouring in and out of me in a wave that drowns me over and over again until I cannot breathe for wanting you. Needing you.”
― Jacquelyn Frank, quote from Elijah
“[...] leaving for a day or two that hopeless sense of loss which makes beauty what it is: a distant lone tree against golden heavens; ripples of light on the inner curve of a bridge; a thing impossible to capture.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from Laughter in the Dark
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.