“Don't be afraid, the darkness you're in is no greater than the darkness inside your own body, they are two darknesses separated by a skin, I bet you've never thought of that, you carry a darkness about with you all the time and that doesn't frighten you...my dear chap, you have to learn to live with the darkness outside just as you learned to live with the darkness inside”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“old photographs are very deceiving, they give us the illusion that we are alive in them, and it's not true, the person we are looking at no longer exists, and if that person could see us, he or she would not recognise him -- or herself in us, 'Who's that looking at me so sadly,' he or she would say.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions, decisions make us.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“إن الصور القديمة تخدعنا كثيرًا، فهي توهمنا بأننا أحياء فيها، وهذا غير صحيح، لأن الشخص الذي ننظر إليه فيها لم يعد موجودًا، ولو كان بمقدوره أن يرانا فلن يتعرف على نفسه فينا، وسيقول من هذا الذي ينظر إليّ بوجه محزون؟.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“الوحدة لم تكن قط بالرفقة الطيبة، فالأحزان الكبيرة، والإغواءات الكبيرة، والأخطاء الكبيرة هي على الدوام تقريبًا نتيجة بقاء المرء وحيدًا في هذه الحياة.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“Nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“فـ الأحزان الكبيرة، والإغواءات الكبيرة، والأخطاء الكبيرة هي على الدوام تقريباً نتيجة بقاء المرء وحيداً في الحياة”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“... we know that it is the search that gives meaning to any find and that one often has to travel a long way in order to arrive at what is near.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“All the great sadnesses, great temptations, and great mistakes are almost always the result of being alone in life, without a prudent friend to advise us when we are troubled by something more serious than our normal everyday problems.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“وهؤلاء هم أشخاصٌ يقتصرون على العيش كيفما أتفق ، أشخاصٌ لم يواجهوا القدر قط وجهاً لوجه”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“عندما تحين الفرصة، يمكن حتى للطيبين أن يتحولوا إلى متصلبين ومتجبرين”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“Al contrario de lo que se cree, sentido y significado nunca han sido lo mismo, el significado se queda aquí, es directo, literal, explícito, cerrado en sí mismo, unívoco, podríamos decir, mientras que le sentido no es capaz de permanecer quieto, hierve de segundos sentidos, terceros y cuartos, de direcciones radicales que se van dividiendo y subdividiendo en ramas y ramajes hasta que se pierdende vista, el sentido de cada palabra se parece a una estrella cuando se pone a proyectar mareas vivas por el espacio, vientos cósmicos, perturbaciones magnéticas, aflicciones".”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“Contrary to what is generally believed, meaning and sense were never the same thing, meaning shows itself at once, direct, literal, explicit, enclosed in itself, univocal, if you like, while sense cannot stay still, it seethes with second, third and fourth senses, radiating out in different directions that divide and subdivide into branches and branchlets, until they disappear from view, the sense of every word is like a star hurling spring tides out into space, cosmic winds, magnetic perturbations, afflictions.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“هناك لحظات في هذه الحياة نطلق فيها العنان لأنفسنا، ولا نتورع عن مكاشفة أول مجهول نصادفه بآلامنا”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“It is well known that the human mind very often makes decisions for reasons it clearly does not know, presumably because it does so after having travelled the paths of the mind at such speed that, afterwards, it cannot recognise those paths, let alone find them again.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“What torments people have to go through when they leave the safety of their homes to become embroiled in mad adventures.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“ولم يكن لديه أي سبب للبحث عن أحد ، وخصوصاً في مثل هذه الساعة من الليل”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“الضمائر تصمتُ أكثر مما هو مطلوبٌ منها، ولهذا أبتُدعت القوانين!!”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“إن الصور القديمة تخدعُنا كثيراً، فهي توهمنا بأننا أحياءُ فيها ،وهذا غير صحيح ، لأن الشخص الذي ننظر إليه فيها لم يعد موجوداً”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“...las viejas fotografías engañan mucho, nos dan la ilusión de que estamos vivos en ellas, y no es cierto, la persona a quien estamos mirando ya no existe, y ella, si pudiese vernos, no se reconocería en nosotros.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“حيثُ تُكرر الكِذبة نَفسها، فـ تتحول إلى حقيقة !”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“..then he added, as if requiring a response to his own remark,
'Probably the greater the difference, the greater the similarity, and the greater the similarity, the greater the difference,' at that moment he did not yet know how right he was.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“Así como la muerte definitiva es el fruto último de la voluntad de olvido, así la voluntad de recuerdo podrá perpetuarnos la vida.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“...indeed it is in the General Cemetery that the results of progress are set out before the eyes of the studious or the merely curious, there are even those who say that a cemetery like this is a kind of library which contains not books but buried people, it really doesn't matter, you can learn as much from people as from books.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“أنت تعرف الاسم الذي أطلقوه عليك، ولكنك لا تعرف الاسم الذي هو لك.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“نحن في الواقع لا نتخذ القرارات، وإنما القرارات هي التي تتخذنا”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“المرء لا يحتاج لكي يموت إلاّ أن يكون حياً”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“The sunset was really over, but a thunderously deep stain of red still lay across the furthest limit of the western sky. I looked out to it for a moment. Skye was somewhere out there, more felt than seen.”
― Iain Banks, quote from Espedair Street
“His great carved wooden head was marked with a black eye that was more yellow than black and from this spectacular bed of bruised flesh the eye itself, sand irritated, bloodshot, as wild as a currawong's, stared out at a landscape in which the tops of fences protruded from windswept sand.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker
“The age of heroes had truly passed, and Tisamenus could not be one even if he burned for it. A great bronze wall had been erected around those old heroes, it descended from the sky, and no one could lift it or trespass there. Each age bestowed its own glory, but the age of my grandson could not be the age of Menelaus.”
― Margaret George, quote from Helen of Troy
“What I wanted to talk to you about was—”
He kissed me. At first he gently touched his lips to mine. e more exciting development was that in order to do this, he’d stepped very close. His chest was an inch
from mine. I could feel his heat. He tasted of blackberries. He leaned even closer and braced his muscular arms on the tree on either side of me.
When he broke the kiss to take a breath, I whispered, “Tree hugger.”
He opened his eyes, blue as the afternoon sky, and gave me this look. A combination of amusement and exasperation and hunger. He looked like a teenager making out
in the woods. Puzzling through this, I realized that I was gazing at him from the perspective of a six-year-old girl playing army and dodging rubber snakes.
But he was this teenager, and so was I. I felt the same need for him that he felt for me, like a force was drawing me forward into his heat. I just didn’t know how to say
it.”
― Jennifer Echols, quote from Endless Summer
“It is our desire to help you understand that you can get to wherever you want to be from wherever you are, no matter where you are or what your current state of Being.”
― Esther Hicks, quote from The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham
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.