“I looked on astounded as from his ordinary life he made his art. We were both ordinary men, he and I. Yet from the ordinary he created Legends--and I from Legends created only the ordinary!”
― Peter Shaffer, quote from Amadeus
“Goodness is nothing in the furnace of art.”
― Peter Shaffer, quote from Amadeus
“What use, after all, is man, if not to teach God His lessons?”
― Peter Shaffer, quote from Amadeus
“God was singing through this little man to all the world.”
― Peter Shaffer, quote from Amadeus
“Tell me, before you call us servants, who served whom? And who, I wonder, in your generations, will immortalize you?”
― Peter Shaffer, quote from Amadeus
“Oh, you monster!No one exists but you, do they? You and your music!”
― Peter Shaffer, quote from Amadeus
“Emperor Joseph II: My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.
Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?”
― Peter Shaffer, quote from Amadeus
“Speaking about time’s relentless passage, Powell’s narrator compares certain stages of experience to the game of Russian Billiards as once he used to play it with a long vanished girlfriend. A game in which, he says,
“...at the termination of a given passage of time...the hidden gate goes down...and all scoring is doubled. This is perhaps an image of how we live. For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected; so that before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity."
”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement
“If it has to be done at all, it must be done with grace”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Boleyn Inheritance
“Help me,” said the Brown Sister. Her face”
― Louise Murphy, quote from The True Story of Hansel and Gretel
“My memory plays me odd tricks these days [...] Age spares us nothing, old friend. Like ancient trees, we die from the top.”
― Gore Vidal, quote from Julian
“My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die.
There is evil for you.
We cannot get rid of mankind’s fleetingly wicked wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true.
I give you a holy word: DISARM.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick
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.