Quotes from Circle of Friends

Maeve Binchy ·  722 pages

Rating: (51.3K votes)


“Who knows what light housework means? One nun’s light could be another nun’s penal servitude.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Circle of Friends


“Eve showed Aidan how to rake the range. “I think when we’re married we might have something more modern,” he grumbled. “No, surely with the eight children we can have them stoking it, going up the chimney even.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Circle of Friends


“Benny knew she was sounding very peculiar but conversation of any kind made her feel less anxious. It filled that great empty echo chamber of anxiety she felt”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Circle of Friends


“Benny explained that it wasn’t her sweater. It was borrowed from a fellow. She wondered why she needed to tell so much to strangers.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Circle of Friends


“God, Benny, don’t blow your nose like that in the church. You’d lift half the congregation out of their seats,” Patsy warned.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Circle of Friends



“For one thing nobody seemed to think that”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Circle of Friends


“The rage she felt was a real thing, you could almost take it out of her and see it, like a red mist.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Circle of Friends


“There had been wonderful news from the convent. Mother Clare had broken her hip. Not that Mother Frances called it wonderful news, but it did mean that she would need to be near a hospital and physiotherapy, and all the stairs and the walking in St. Mary's wouldn't be advisable. Mother Frances was in the middle of the thirty days prayer when this happened. She told Eve that it was her biggest crisis of faith yet. Could the prayer be too powerful?”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Circle of Friends


About the author

Maeve Binchy
Born place: in Dalkey, County Dublin, Ireland
Born date May 28, 1940
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“We all have such stories. It is a brutal arithmetic. But I - I am alive. You are alive. As long as we breathe, we can see and hear. As long as we can remember, all those gone before are alive inside us.”
― Jane Yolen, quote from The Devil's Arithmetic


“It is manifest that behind the so-called curtain which is supposed to conceal the inner world, there is nothing to be seen unless we go behind it ourselves, as much in order that we may see, as that there may be something behind there which can be seen.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit


“How could the disciplines and the power that functions in them appear arbitrary, when they merely operate the mechanisms of justice itself, even with a view to mitigating their intensity?”
― Michel Foucault, quote from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison


“Yet if there really were a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions—so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! And why should it determine that we come to the right conclusions from the evidence? Might it not equally well determine that we draw the wrong conclusion? Or no conclusion at all?”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time


“I am content to be hated, and bloody, and outnumbered. For in this sickened world, it is better to believe in something too fiercely than to believe in nothing."

Words, words, wonderful words. But lies too.

"No, it isn’t!" shouted Mosca the Housefly, Quillam Mye’s daughter. "Not if what you’re believin’ isn’t blinkin’ well True! You shouldn’t just go believin’ things for no reason, pertickly if you got a sword in your hand! Sacred just means something you’re not meant to think about properly, an’ you should never stop thinking! Show me something I can kick, and hit with rocks, and set fire to, and leave out in the rain, and think about, and if it’s still standing after all that then maybe, just maybe, I’ll start to believe in it, but not till then. An’ if all we’re left with is muck and wickedness and no gods, then we’d better face it and get used to it because it’s better than a lie.”
― Frances Hardinge, quote from Fly by Night


Interesting books

A Darker Shade of Magic
(100.6K)
A Darker Shade of Ma...
by V.E. Schwab
The Name of This Book Is Secret
(44.3K)
The Name of This Boo...
by Pseudonymous Bosch
The Good, the Bad, and the Undead
(55.1K)
The Good, the Bad, a...
by Kim Harrison
Bartleby the Scrivener
(34.8K)
Bartleby the Scriven...
by Herman Melville
Lust for Life
(16.8K)
Lust for Life
by Irving Stone
Fairest
(54.1K)
Fairest
by Gail Carson Levine

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.