“I know you've taken risks to do these things. Do Please be careful."
"Don't worry about me," he said. "You've got enough troubles on your own plate, my word. But we'll come out all right, so long as we just keep alive, that's all we got to do. Just keep alive another two years, till the war's over.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice
“She looked at him in wonder. "Do people think of me like that? I only did what anybody could have done."
"That's as it may be," he replied. "The fact is, that you did it.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice
“It's no good going on living in the ashes of a dead happiness.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice
“It’s no good going on living in the ashes of a dead happiness.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice
“Men' s souls are naturally inclined to covetousness; but if ye be kind towards women and fear to wrong tgem, God is well acquainted with what ye do.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice
“People who spent the war in prison camps have written a lot of books about what a bad time they had, she said quietly, staring into the embers. they don't know what it was like, not being in a camp.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice
“it was so beautiful', he said. 'the Three Pagodas Pass must be one of the loveliest places in the world. you've got this broad valley with the river running down it, and the jungle forest, and the mountains....we used to sit by the river and watch the sun setting behind the mountains, sometimes, and say what a marvellous place it would be to come to for a holiday. however terrible a prison camp may be, it makes a difference if its beautiful.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice
“It was a gambler's action, but his whole life had probably been made up of gambles; it could hardly be otherwise in the outback.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice
“He said, "The spring was good enough for their mothers and their grandmothers before them. They will get ideas above their station in life if they have a well." She”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice
“Leave-takings are stupid things, and best forgotten about as quickly as possible.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice
Nevil Shute
Born place: in London, England, The United Kingdom
Born date January 17, 1899
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“I'm going to go home. Everything is going to be normal again. Boring again. Wonderful again.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere
“IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Speak
“Then they would roll these handfuls of cloud in their fingers until they turned into what looked like large white marbles. Then they would toss the marbles to one side and quickly grab more bits of cloud and start over again.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from James and the Giant Peach
“I make that four horses and ten men just to get rid of one old woman. What did you do to the King?”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from Howl's Moving Castle
“Soon after the completion of his college course, his whole nature was kindled into one intense and passionate effervescence of romantic passion. His hour came,—the hour that comes only once; his star rose in the horizon,—that star that rises so often in vain, to be remembered only as a thing of dreams; and it rose for him in vain. To drop the figure,—he saw and won the love of a high-minded and beautiful woman, in one of the northern states, and they were affianced. He returned south to make arrangements for their marriage, when, most unexpectedly, his letters were returned to him by mail, with a short note from her guardian, stating to him that ere this reached him the lady would be the wife of another. Stung to madness, he vainly hoped, as many another has done, to fling the whole thing from his heart by one desperate effort. Too proud to supplicate or seek explanation, he threw himself at once into a whirl of fashionable society, and in a fortnight from the time of the fatal letter was the accepted lover of the reigning belle of the season; and as soon as arrangements could be made, he became the husband of a fine figure, a pair of bright dark eyes, and a hundred thousand dollars; and, of course, everybody thought him a happy fellow.
The married couple were enjoying their honeymoon, and entertaining a brilliant circle of friends in their splendid villa, near Lake Pontchartrain, when, one day, a letter was brought to him in that well-remembered writing. It was handed to him while he was in full tide of gay and successful conversation, in a whole room-full of company. He turned deadly pale when he saw the writing, but still preserved his composure, and finished the playful warfare of badinage which he was at the moment carrying on with a lady opposite; and, a short time after, was missed from the circle. In his room,alone, he opened and read the letter, now worse than idle and useless to be read. It was from her, giving a long account of a persecution to which she had been exposed by her guardian's family, to lead her to unite herself with their son: and she related how, for a long time, his letters had ceased to arrive; how she had written time and again, till she became weary and doubtful; how her health had failed under her anxieties, and how, at last, she had discovered the whole fraud which had been practised on them both. The letter ended with expressions of hope and thankfulness, and professions of undying affection, which were more bitter than death to the unhappy young man. He wrote to her immediately:
I have received yours,—but too late. I believed all I heard. I was desperate. I am married, and all is over. Only forget,—it is all that remains for either of us."
And thus ended the whole romance and ideal of life for Augustine St. Clare. But the real remained,—the real, like the flat, bare, oozy tide-mud, when the blue sparkling wave, with all its company of gliding boats and white-winged ships, its music of oars and chiming waters, has gone down, and there it lies, flat, slimy, bare,—exceedingly real.
Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, quote from Uncle Tom's Cabin
American Sniper: The...
The Book of Life
Danse Macabre
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Boundless
The Shadow of the To...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.
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