Quotes from Balthazar

“Odd, isn't it? He really was the right man for her in a sort of way; but then as you know, it is a law of love that the so-called 'right' person always comes to soon or too late.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“Very few people realise that sex is a psychic and not a physical act. The clumsy coupling of human beings is simply a biological paraphrase of this truth - a primitive method of introducing minds to each other, engaging them. But most people are stuck in the physical aspect, unaware of the poetic rapport which it so clumsily tries to teach.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“We live" writes Pursewarden somewhere, "lives based upon selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time - not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“Love is like trench warfare - you cannot see the enemy, but you know he is there and that it is wiser to keep your head down.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“A diary is the last place to go if you wish to seek the truth about a person. Nobody dares to make the final confession to themselves on paper: or at least, not about love.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“I am just a refugee from the long slow toothache of English life. It is terrible to love life so much you can hardly breathe!”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“The steward, according to custom, had stopped all the clocks. This, in the language of Narouz, said, "Your stay with us is so brief, let us not be reminded of the flight of the hours. God made eternity. Let us escape from the despotism of time altogether." These ancient and hereditary politenesses filled Nessim with emotion.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“But I love to feel events overlapping each other, crawling over one another like wet crabs in a basket”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“اننا عادة ما نولد لكي نحب هؤلاء الذين يصيبوننا بالجراح اكثر من غيرهم
رباعية الإسكندرية - بلتازار”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“Any concentration of the will displaces life and gives it bias in motion. Reality, he believed, was always trying to copy the imagination of man, from which it derived.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“I love the French edition with its uncut pages. I would not want a reader too lazy to use a knife on me.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“Each of our five senses contains an art.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“إن تداخل الحقائق هو الطريقة الوحيدة كى تكون أمينا مع الزمن، حاشد فى كل لحظة باحتمالات لانهائية التكاثر. والحياة تتوقف على فعل الاختيار، أبدية الدينونة، وأبدية الانتقاء.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“إننى أعتقد، أنه من الأفضل لنا أن ندير ظهورنا بوضوح للكلمات الرنانة مثل "الجمال" و"الحقيقة" وما الى ذلك. هل ترين ما أرى؟ إننا سخفاء للغاية، وضعاف العقول عندما نتناول أمور الحياة،لكننا عمالقة عندما نحكم على الكون.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

“ويكتب بورسواردن: "فى البداية نسعى كى نملأ بالحب فراغ ذواتنا ونستمتع لحظة قصيرة بوهم الكمال. لكن ذلك ليس إلا وهما. حيث إن هذا المخلوق الغريب الذى أعتقدنا أنه سيصلنا بجسد العالم، قد نجح فى النهاية، فى فصلناعنه فصلا تاما. الحب يصل ثم يفرق وإلا فكيف لنا أن ننمو؟”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Balthazar

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Popular quotes

“Everyone in the world needs two, three jobs,” I said, without hesitation. “One job isn’t enough, just as one life isn’t enough. I want to have a dozen of both.” “Bull’s-eye. Doctors should dig ditches. Ditchdiggers ought to run kindergartens one day a week. Philosophers should wash dishes in a greasy spoon two nights out of ten. Mathematicians should blow whistles at high school gyms. Poets should drive trucks for a change of menu and police detectives—” “Should own and operate the Garden of Eden,” I said, quietly.”
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About BookQuoters

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.