“But the past is passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright son has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over new leaves.
Because they have no memory . . . because they are not human.”
― Herman Melville, quote from Benito Cereno
“This slavery breeds ugly passions in man.”
― Herman Melville, quote from Benito Cereno
“The morning was one peculiar to that coast. Everything was mute and calm; everything gray. The sea, though undulated into long roods of swells, seemed fixed, and was sleeked at the surface like waved lead that has cooled and set in the smelter's mould. The sky seemed a gray surtout. Flights of troubled gray fowl, kith and kin with flights of troubled gray vapors among which they were mixed, skimmed low and fitfully over the waters, as swallows over meadows before storms. Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to come.”
― Herman Melville, quote from Benito Cereno
“the king of kind hearts and polite fellows”
― Herman Melville, quote from Benito Cereno
“His mind swarmed with superstitious suspicions.”
― Herman Melville, quote from Benito Cereno
“images far swifter than these sentences”
― Herman Melville, quote from Benito Cereno
“all was eclipsed in sinister muteness”
― Herman Melville, quote from Benito Cereno
“But, in fact, his reserve might, in some degree, have proceeded from design. If so, then here was evinced the unhealthy climax of that icy though conscientious policy, more or less adopted by all commanders of large ships, which, except in signal emergencies, obliterates alike the manifestation of sway with every trace of sociality; transforming the man into a block, or rather into a loaded cannon, which, until there is call for thunder, has nothing to say. Viewing”
― Herman Melville, quote from Benito Cereno
Herman Melville
Born place: in New York City, New York, The United States
Born date August 1, 1819
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“It is a poor head that cannot find plausible reason for doing what the heart wants to do.”
― Richard Hofstadter, quote from The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It
“There is something divine in mindless beauty.”
― Albert Camus, quote from A Happy Death
“But not joy. No, that belonged to simpler minds.”
― Evan S. Connell, quote from Mrs. Bridge
“Imagine this: Take your problems, all of them, from the tiniest, annoying concerns to the most horrific, difficult challenges, and put all those problems into a brown paper bag. Then imagine if everyone else in the world took all their problems and put them into their own paper bags. Think of how many bags there would be, all piled up into one gigantic mountain of brown paper. If you were told you could pick any bag of problems and take it home with you, do you think you'd want someone else's problems? I don't think so. You'd be scampering like crazy to find your own bag in that mountain of brown paper.”
― quote from The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew--Three Women Search for Understanding
“Sleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we're not alone in the universe, even in sleep.”
― Adrienne Rich, quote from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984
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Thousand WordsBookQuoters 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.
