“Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from God Knows
“But how can one be warm alone?”
― Joseph Heller, quote from God Knows
“That's another thing that pisses me off about that Michelangelo statue of me in Florence. He's got me standing there uncircumcised! Who the fuck did he think I was?”
― Joseph Heller, quote from God Knows
“It takes very little to make us [women] happy, and more than is contained in heaven and earth to keep us that way”
― Joseph Heller, quote from God Knows
“Some Promised Land. The honey was there, but the milk we brought in with our goats. To people in California, God gives a magnificent coastline, a movie industry, and Beverly Hills. To us He gives sand. To Cannes He gives a plush film festival. We get the PLO. Our winters are rainy, our summers hot. To people who didn't know how to wind a wristwatch He gives underground oceans of oil. To us He gives hernia, piles, and anti-Semitism.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from God Knows
“You’ve got to have a God. Without God, you might turn to something really crazy, like witchcraft, or religion.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from God Knows
“First impressions die slowly, bad impressions take even longer”
― Joseph Heller, quote from God Knows
“Moses has the Ten Commandments, it's true, but I've got much better lines - King David”
― Joseph Heller, quote from God Knows
“Indeed, the real question is not, “Why greatness?” but “What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?” If you have to ask the question, “Why should we try to make it great? Isn’t success enough?” then you’re probably engaged in the wrong line of work.”
― James C. Collins, quote from Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
“Practicing silence means making a commitment to take a certain amount of time to simply Be. Experiencing silence means periodically withdrawing from the activity of speech. It also means periodically withdrawing from such activities as watching television, listening to the radio, or reading a book. If you never give yourself the opportunity to experience silence, this creates turbulence in your internal dialogue.”
― Deepak Chopra, quote from The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams
“Don't care about gods. Gods are irrelevant. What counts is people. What counts is having respect for each other.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, quote from Blade of Tyshalle
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“Men are always the last to ken what women know by sniffing the air. That's why God gave bodily might to Adam, to balance the inequities of strength. For if Eve had been given the power to serve her cunning and cruelty, there would have been a terrible reckoning for all mandkind, and the archangel would have trod on Adam's heels to escape paradise unsinged.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter
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.