“As for difficulties," replied Ferguson, in a serious tone, "they were made to be overcome.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Five Weeks in a Balloon
“Besides," said Kennedy, "the time when industry gets a grip of everything and uses it to its own advantage may not be particularly amusing. If men go on inventing machinery they'll end up by being swallowed by their own machines. I've always thought that the last day will be brought about by some colossal boiler heated to three thousand atmospheres blowing up the world."
"And I bet the Yankees will have had a hand in it," said Joe.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Five Weeks in a Balloon
“Huzza for the Queen! Huzza for Old England!”
― Jules Verne, quote from Five Weeks in a Balloon
“The man who was born to be hung will never be drowned!”
― Jules Verne, quote from Five Weeks in a Balloon
“If savages had the ways of gentlemen, where would be the difference?”
― Jules Verne, quote from Five Weeks in a Balloon
“Now, if the question were to destroy a lion, a tiger, a cat, a hyena, I could understand it; but to deprive an antelope or a gazelle of life, to no other purpose than the gratification of your instincts as a sportsman, seems hardly worth the trouble.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Five Weeks in a Balloon
“Poh! doctor, one has only just to follow things along as they happen, and he can always work his way out of a scrape! The safest plan, you see, is to take matters as they come.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Five Weeks in a Balloon
“la detinée les éloigna parfois, mais la sympathie les réunit toujours”
― Jules Verne, quote from Five Weeks in a Balloon
“là ou l'on ne peut passer au milieu, il faut passer à coté ou passer dessus !”
― Jules Verne, quote from Five Weeks in a Balloon
“Ippolit Matveevich turned even redder, pulled out a tiny notebook, and wrote in a calligraphic hand:
25/4/1927 — rubles issued to Comrade Bender — 8.
Ostap took a look inside the little book.
'Oh-ho! If you've gone ahead and opened a personal account for me, then the least you could do is tally it right. Start up a debit column, start up a credit column. Don't forget to enter the sixty thousand rubles you owe me in the debits, and the vest can go in the credits. The balance is in my favor: 59,992 rubles.”
― Ilya Ilf, quote from The Twelve Chairs
“I have a subconscious list of rules for how reality should work. I did not develop these rules on purpose, and most of them don’t make sense – which is disturbing when you consider that they are an attempt to govern the behavior of reality – but they exist, and they play a large role in determining how I react to the things that happen to me. Large enough that a majority of the feelings I feel are simply a reaction to reality not complying with my arbitrary set of rules. Reality doesn’t give a shit about my rules, and this upsets me.”
― Allie Brosh, quote from Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened
“For twenty years I have ached to go back home, when there was nobody there to whom I could return.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“Publicity images often use sculptures or paintings to lend allure or authority to their own message. Framed oil paintings often hang in shop windows as part of their display.
Any work of art 'quoted' by publicity serves two purposes. Art is a sign of affluence; it belongs to the good life; it is part of the furnishing which the world gives to the rich and the beautiful.
But a work of art also suggests a cultural authority, a form of dignity, even of wisdom, which is superior to any vulgar material interest; an oil painting belongs to the cultural heritage; it is a reminder of what it means to be a cultivated European. And so the quoted work of art (and this is why it is so useful to publicity) says two almost contradictory things at the same time: it denotes wealth and spirituality: it implies that the purchase being proposed is both a luxury and a cultural value. Publicity has in fact understood the tradition of the oil painting more thoroughly than most art historians. It has grasped the implications of the relationship between the work of art and its spectator-owner and with these it tries to persuade and flatter the spectator-buyer.
The continuity, however, between oil painting and publicity goes far deeper than the 'quoting' of specific paintings. Publicity relies to a very large extent on the language of oil painting. It speaks in the same voice about the same things. (P. 129)”
― John Berger, quote from Ways of Seeing
“A glacier consumes whole forests by inches.”
― Greg Iles, quote from The Quiet Game
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.