“The world is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.”
― Taylor Caldwell, quote from Captains and the Kings
“Republics never survive, for their people do not like freedom but prefer to be led and guided and flattered and seduced into slavery by a benevolent, or not so, benevolent despot. They want to worship Caesar. So, American republicanism will inevitably die and become a democracy, and then decline, as Aristotle said into a despotism.”
― Taylor Caldwell, quote from Captains and the Kings
“Mankind adores its betrayers, and murders its saviors.”
― Taylor Caldwell, quote from Captains and the Kings
“When you are young you believe the world is all yours, glorious and exhilarating and fascinating and full of promise and trumpets and drums and marches and new worlds,” said Charles. “We don’t ask ourselves what we are living for then. We know. But we forget, later, or it all seems a foolish dream.”
― Taylor Caldwell, quote from Captains and the Kings
“money came from human misery and death and despair, as always it does.”
― Taylor Caldwell, quote from Captains and the Kings
“Forests, hills, mountains, rivers, and green streams had no protection in the face of rapacity.”
― Taylor Caldwell, quote from Captains and the Kings
“Profits. Joe, if you want to use just one word”—and Mr. Healey wagged a huge finger at Joseph—“to describe wars and the making of wars, it’s profits. Nothing else. Profits.”
― Taylor Caldwell, quote from Captains and the Kings
“But then, I suppose, when with the benefit of hindsight one begins to search one's past for such 'turning points', one is apt to start seeing them everywhere.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, quote from The Remains of the Day
“But on Kwajalein, the guards sought to deprive them of something that had sustained them even as all else had been lost: dignity. This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
“Ohmygod. Did hell just freeze over?" - Zoey Redbird when Aphrodite LaFonte tells her parents that Zoey deserves to be leader of the Dark Daughters”
― P.C. Cast, quote from Betrayed
“He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.”
― Susanna Clarke, quote from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
“We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, quote from The Virgin Suicides
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.