Quotes from Complete Works

“A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:
From time to time my heart is like some oak
Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Complete Works

“I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; Garlands from window to window; Golden chains from star to star ... And I dance.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Complete Works

“Evening prayer

I spend my life sitting, like an angel in a barber's chair,
Holding a beer mug with deep-cut designs,
My neck and gut both bent, while in the air
A weightless veil of pipe smoke hangs.

Like steaming dung within an old dovecote
A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:
From time to time my heart is like some oak
Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.

And then, when I have swallowed down my Dreams
In thirty, forty mugs of beer, I turn
To satisfy a need I can't ignore,

And like the Lord of Hyssop and of Myrrh
I piss into the skies, a soaring stream
That consecrates a patch of flowering fern.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Complete Works

“Ciel ! Amour ! Liberté ! Quel rêve, ô pauvre Folle!
Tu te fondais à lui comme une neige au feu”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Complete Works

“These verses believe; they love; they hope; that is all.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Complete Works

“Eternas ondinas,
dividid el agua fina.
Venus, del azul hermana,
conmueve las puras aguas.

Judío errante en Noruega,
dime, ¿cómo nieva?
Viejos exiliados tiernos,
contadme el océano.

YO-. Nunca esas bebidas puras,
ni esas flores de florero,
ni leyendas, ni figuras,
saciarme pudieron.

Coplista, tu ahijada
es mi sed que se desboca,
hidra íntima sin bocas
que roe y devasta.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Complete Works

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Popular quotes

“Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, quote from Vanity Fair

“Let us remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think about doing them). A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The God Delusion

“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“He thought here you are Joe Bonham lying like a side of beef all the rest of your life and for what? Somebody tapped you on the shoulder and said come along son we’re going to war. So you went. But why? In any other deal even like buying a car or running an errand you had the right to say what’s there in it for me? Otherwise you’d be buying bad cars for too much money or running errands for fools and starving to death. It was a kind of duty you owed yourself that when anybody said come on son do this or do that you should stand up and say look mister why should I do this for who am I doing it and what am I going to get out of it in the end? But when a guy comes along and says here come with me and risk your life and maybe die or be crippled why then you’ve got no rights. You haven’t even the right to say yes or no or I’ll think it over. There are plenty of laws to protect guys’ money even in war time but there’s nothing on the books says a man’s life’s his own. Of”
― Dalton Trumbo, quote from Johnny Got His Gun

“Break my heart. Break it a thousand times if you like. It was only ever yours to break anyway.”
― Kiera Cass, quote from The One

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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.