Quotes from Justine

“Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“A city becomes a world when one loves one of its inhabitants.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“We are all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“I am quite alone. I am neither happy nor unhappy; I lie suspended like a hair or a feather in the cloudy mixtures of memory.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“These are the moments which are not calculable, and cannot be assessed in words; they live on in the solution of memory, like wonderful creatures, unique of their own kind, dredged up from the floors of some unexplored ocean.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“إنه لأمر فظيع أن يلوم الإنسان نفسه فوق ما يُعانيه من شقاء وعذاب.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“She took kisses like so many coats of paint […] how long and how vainly I searched for excuses which might make her amorality if not palatable at lest understandable. I realize now the time I wasted in this way; instead of enjoying her and turning aside from these preoccupations with the thought, ‘She is untrustworthy as she is beautiful. She takes love as plants do water, lightly, thoughtlessly.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“Art—the meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“The loved object is simply one that has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcissistically; and the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors. All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride, or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning point—for from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“I have been thinking about the girl I met last night in the mirror: dark on the marble-ivory white: glossy black hair: deep suspiring eyes in which one's glances sink because they are nervous, curious, turned to sexual curiosity.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“I suppose the secret of his success is in his tremendous idleness which almost approaches the supernatural.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“I have done so many things in my life," she said to the mirror. "Evil things, perhaps. But never unattentively, never wastefully...was I wrong?”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“It is hard to fight with one's heart's desires; whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of the soul.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“In these days Melissa's absorbed and provoking gentleness had all the qualities of a rediscovered youth. Her long uncertain fingers - I used to feel them moving over my face when she thought I slept, as if to memorize the happiness we had shared. In her there was a pliancy, a resilience which was Oriental - a passion to serve. My shabby clothes - the way she picked up a dirty shirt seemed to engulf it with an overflowing solicitude; in the morning I found my razor beautifully cleaned and even the toothpaste laid upon the brush in readiness. Her care for me was a goad, provoking me to give my life some sort of shape and style that might match the simplicity of hers. Of her experiences in love she would never speak, turning from them with a weariness and distaste which suggested that they had been born of necessity rather than desire. She paid me the comlpiment of saying: "For the first time I am not afraid to be light-headed or foolish with a man".”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“الكراهية ما هى إلا حب لم يتحقق.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“People only see in us the contemptible skirt-fever which rules our actions but completely miss the beauty-hunger underlying it.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“What do you believe? You never say anything. At the most you sometimes laugh.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“إننا نستخدم بعضنا البعض كمعاول نهدم بها هؤلاء الذين نحبهم حبا حقيقيا.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“He thought and suffered a good deal but he lacked the resolution to dare--the first requisite of a practitioner.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“أسوأ فشل عانيته هو فشلى مع الناس: ولقد كان ذلك نتاج انفصال روحى أخذ يزداد بالتدريج، انفصال نهائى عن التملك بينما أطلق لى العنان كى أتعاطف مع الناس. وغدوت شيئا فشيئا وعلى نحو لا يمكن تفسيره أشد عجزا عن ممارسة الحب.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“Poverty is a great cutter-off and riches a great shutter-off.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“مظهره الخارجى لم يحمل أى إشارة تنبئ عن هذه الصراعات، فقد ظل حديثه جافا موزونا رغم حمى الأفكار التى تكمن وراءه.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“إن المرء يحتاج لقدر هائل من الجهل حتى يقرب الله، وأعتقد أننى كنت أعرف على الدوام أكثر مما يجب.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as do the ordinary people, but to fulfill it in its true potential - the imagination.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“الحب ليس إلا نوعا من اللغة التى يتحدث بها الجسد.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“He hablado de la inutilidad del arte, pero no he dicho la verdad sobre el consuelo que procura.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“Her efforts to achieve herself had led her always towards, and not away from him.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

About the author

Popular quotes

“There is always a real and an imaginary person you are in love with; sometimes you love one best, sometimes the other.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement

“When I was first at court and he was the young husband of a beautiful wife, he was a golden king. They called him the handsomest prince in Christendom, and that was not flattery. Mary Boleyn was in love with him, Anne was in love with him, I was in love with him. There was not one girl at court, nor one girl in the country, who could resist him. Then he turned against his wife, Queen Katherine, a good woman, and Anne taught him how to be cruel.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Boleyn Inheritance

“It is finished. The tale is told truthfully, and truth is no heavier, no more beautiful than lies. Yet there is something that makes me love the truth, and that love made me wander and worry until the truth was given to you, like a gift. For this in the end is what we have. The love of something. Wild ponies. A kiss salted by tears. The scent of raspberry syrup in a bottle. Oranges. Two lost children who come to your house in the dark forest. There is much to love, and that love is what we are left with. When the bombs stop dropping, and the camps fall back to the earth and decay, and we are done killing each other, that is what we must hold. We can never let the world take our memories of love away, and if there are no memories, we must invent love all over again. The wheel turns. Blue above, green below, we wander a long way, but love is what the cup of our soul contains when we leave the world and the flesh. This we will drink forever. I know. I am Magda. I am the witch.”
― Louise Murphy, quote from The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

“They say that to know oneself is to know all there is that is human. But of course no one can ever know himself. Nothing human is fully calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.”
― Gore Vidal, quote from Julian

“For some reason, the less you pay for a watch, the surer you can be that it will never stop.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

Interesting books

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.