Quotes from Here be Dragons

“Poor Wales. So far from Heaven, so close to England.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“Eleanor would have been indifferent to the immorality of her adultery, but would never have forgiven the stupidity of it.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“The Welsh were a god-cursed, stiff-necked, and utterly vexatious people, John said bitterly, but they did have an inexplicable ability to rise phoenixlike from the ashes of defeat, to soar upwards on wings too scorched for flight.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“Oh, John is clever enough. But what do brains avail a man if he does lack for backbone?”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“Whilst stupidity may indeed be a sin, it is also possible to be too clever. I sometimes fear, John, that you are too clever by half.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“Indeed. But I was not thinking of his immortal soul, Matilda. I was thinking that history is chronicled by monks.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“If disliking Richard be grounds for accusing a man of conspiracy, I daresay you could implicate half of Christendom in this so-called plot. Richard endears himself easiest to those who've yet to meet him.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“If that’s how you’d rather remember it. But I did not mean that as a reproach. I do not, in truth, think less of you for having the common sense to abandon a ship once waves began to break over the bow. Nor, after sixteen years shut away from the sun, am I likely to find tears to spare for Henry Plantagenet.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“War is the least productive of men’s pastimes, and the most indulgent.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“Poor Wales, so far from Heaven, so close to England!”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“The day that he accused a reigning King of murder was the day he signed his own death warrant, and he knew it.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“I’ve never been so hungry that I was willing to lick honey off thorns.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“There are secret sins and found-out sins, and it is foolish to worry about the first until it becomes the second.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“I would look dreadful in black.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“Richard forced him from his sickbed, broke his power, his pride. But you, John, you broke his heart. I truly wonder which be the greater sin.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“In a contest of wills between John and his mother, he did not think John would prevail, indeed he hoped he would not. But he did not care to be a witness to their confrontation; he suspected Eleanor's methods would be neither maternal nor merciful.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“Otherwise, I’d like nothing better than…conversing with you. You’re such a deep, penetrating conversationalist, after all,”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“Memory is merciful, Joanna, more so than man. It fades past pain, yet holds bright the colors in recalled joy.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Here be Dragons

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“ Stoga, ipak, kao najbolji savjet ostaje: primati sve onako kako je, ponašati se kao teška masa, pa makar se sam osjećao kao da si otpuhan, ne dopustiti da te nešto namami na pogrešan korak, promatrati druge životinjskim pogledom, ne osjećati kajanje, ukratko - vlastitom rukom pritiskati ono što je od života još ostalo kao avet, to jest još uvećati posljednji grobni mir i ne znati više za postojanje ičega drugog osim njega.
Karakterističan pokret takvog stanja jeste prelaženje malim prstom preko obrva. ”
― Franz Kafka, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“If I wanted to bring you down, David, I could’ve done that months ago.” “If I wanted you dead, Agent Hassler—you and everyone you love—there is nothing in the world stopping me from making that happen. Not from prison. Not from the grave.” “So we’ve established trust,” Hassler said. “Perhaps. Or at the very least, assured mutual destruction.” “No difference in my book.”
― Blake Crouch, quote from Wayward

“The key point is that these patterns, while mostly stable, are not permanent: certain environmental experiences can add or subtract methyls and acetyls, changing those patterns. In effect this etches a memory of what the organism was doing or experiencing into its cells—a crucial first step for any Lamarck-like inheritance. Unfortunately, bad experiences can be etched into cells as easily as good experiences. Intense emotional pain can sometimes flood the mammal brain with neurochemicals that tack methyl groups where they shouldn’t be. Mice that are (however contradictory this sounds) bullied by other mice when they’re pups often have these funny methyl patterns in their brains. As do baby mice (both foster and biological) raised by neglectful mothers, mothers who refuse to lick and cuddle and nurse. These neglected mice fall apart in stressful situations as adults, and their meltdowns can’t be the result of poor genes, since biological and foster children end up equally histrionic. Instead the aberrant methyl patterns were imprinted early on, and as neurons kept dividing and the brain kept growing, these patterns perpetuated themselves. The events of September 11, 2001, might have scarred the brains of unborn humans in similar ways. Some pregnant women in Manhattan developed post-traumatic stress disorder, which can epigenetically activate and deactivate at least a dozen genes, including brain genes. These women, especially the ones affected during the third trimester, ended up having children who felt more anxiety and acute distress than other children when confronted with strange stimuli. Notice that these DNA changes aren’t genetic, because the A-C-G-T string remains the same throughout. But epigenetic changes are de facto mutations; genes might as well not function. And just like mutations, epigenetic changes live on in cells and their descendants. Indeed, each of us accumulates more and more unique epigenetic changes as we age. This explains why the personalities and even physiognomies of identical twins, despite identical DNA, grow more distinct each year. It also means that that detective-story trope of one twin committing a murder and both getting away with it—because DNA tests can’t tell them apart—might not hold up forever. Their epigenomes could condemn them. Of course, all this evidence proves only that body cells can record environmental cues and pass them on to other body cells, a limited form of inheritance. Normally when sperm and egg unite, embryos erase this epigenetic information—allowing you to become you, unencumbered by what your parents did. But other evidence suggests that some epigenetic changes, through mistakes or subterfuge, sometimes get smuggled along to new generations of pups, cubs, chicks, or children—close enough to bona fide Lamarckism to make Cuvier and Darwin grind their molars.”
― Sam Kean, quote from The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code

“If there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions. But it does so in a way that is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being. The reason we say that humans have free will is because we can't predict what they will do.”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes

“Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library The Island of Dr. Libris Welcome to Wonderland: Home Sweet Motel Welcome to Wonderland: Beach Party Surf Monkey The Haunted Mystery series COAUTHORED WITH JAMES PATTERSON Daniel X: Armageddon Daniel X: Lights Out House of Robots House of Robots: Robots Go Wild! I Funny I Even Funnier I Totally Funniest I Funny TV Jacky Ha-Ha Treasure Hunters Treasure Hunters: Danger Down the Nile Treasure Hunters: Secret of the Forbidden City Treasure Hunters: Peril at the Top of the World Word of Mouse”
― Chris Grabenstein, quote from Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics

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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.

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