“Indolent and unworthy the beggar may be—but that is not your concern: It is better, said Joseph Smith, to feed ten impostors than to run the risk of turning away one honest petition.”
― Hugh Nibley, quote from Approaching Zion
“Competitiveness always rests on the assumption of a life-and-death struggle.”
― Hugh Nibley, quote from Approaching Zion
“Nobody loves the rat race, but nobody can think of anything else—Satan has us just where he wants us.”
― Hugh Nibley, quote from Approaching Zion
“Who can be 'agents unto themselves' if they are in bondage to others and have to accept their terms?”
― Hugh Nibley, quote from Approaching Zion
“Can the mere convenience that makes money such a useful device continue indefinitely to outweigh the horrendous and growing burden of evil that it imposes on the human race and ultimately brings its dependents to ruin?”
― Hugh Nibley, quote from Approaching Zion
“The genius of stable societies is that they achieve stability without stagnation, repetition without monotony, conformity with originality, obedience with liberty.”
― Hugh Nibley, quote from Approaching Zion
“Self-justification, that was the danger-- the exhilerating exercise of explaining why my ways are God's ways after all.”
― Hugh Nibley, quote from Approaching Zion
“Was it possible? She had taken me with her hoping that as a punishment my parents would not send me to middle school? Or had she brought me back in such a hurry so that I would avoid punishment? Or - I wonder today - did she want at different moments both things?”
― quote from My Brilliant Friend
“Religious belief is an attempt to endow your life with deeper meaning and embed it in a positive metacontext—it is the deeply human attempt to finally feel at home. It is a strategy to outsmart the hedonic treadmill. On an individual level, it seems to be one of the most successful ways to achieve a stable state—as good as or better than any drug so far discovered. Now science seems to be taking all this away from us. The emerging emptiness may be one reason for the current rise of religious fundamentalism, even in secular societies. Yes,”
― Thomas Metzinger, quote from The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
“But one shelf was a little neater than the rest and here I noted the following sequence which for a moment seemed to form a vague musical phrase, oddly familiar: Hamlet, La morte d’Arthur, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, South Wind, The Lady with the Dog, Madame Bovary, The Invisible Man, Le Temps Retrouvé, Anglo-Persian Dictionary, The Author of Trixie, Alice in Wonderland, Ulysses, About Buying a Horse, King Lear … The melody gave a small gasp and faded.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
“The cigarette gets the credit for everything and the blame for nothing.”
― Allen Carr, quote from The Easy Way to Stop Smoking: Join the Millions Who Have Become Nonsmokers Using the Easyway Method
“I don’t think we should spend any time wandering around that remote possibility. It’s nice of you to wish me well, but actually I find it unbearably patronizing.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Heart and Soul
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.