“I thank God daily for the good fortune of my birth, for I am certain I would have made a miserable peasant.”
― C.S. Forester, quote from Mr. Midshipman Hornblower
“Clairvoyant, Hornblower could foresee that in a year's time, the world would hardy remember the incident. In twenty years, it would be entirely forgotten. Yet those headless corpses up there in Muzillac; those shattered redcoats; those Frenchmen caught in the four-pounder's blast of canister -- they were as dead as if it had been a day in which history had been changed.”
― C.S. Forester, quote from Mr. Midshipman Hornblower
“His self-respect was at its lowest ebb.”
― C.S. Forester, quote from Mr. Midshipman Hornblower
“Harm began to come to Hornblower from that day forth, despite his obedience to orders and diligent study of his duties, and it stemmed from the arrival in the midshipmen’s berth of John Simpson as senior warrant officer.”
― C.S. Forester, quote from Mr. Midshipman Hornblower
“July 4th, 1776,” mused Keene, reading Hornblower’s date of birth to himself.”
― C.S. Forester, quote from Mr. Midshipman Hornblower
“It's quiet in the car, in a good way for once. No words, no music. Silence seems right. I roll down the windows and lean my head against the door frame, listening to the wind rush by and smelling the pine trees. I watch the stars materialize, like someone is dimming the switch on the night sky so each shining dot grows brighter and brighter.”
― Jennifer Salvato Doktorski, quote from How My Summer Went Up in Flames
“boys had been programmed by Darwinian selection to run around in the open chucking spears at wild animals—something”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“Fucking bastards are simple by nature.”
― Alice Sebold, quote from The Almost Moon
“A pastor should never complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, quote from Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community
“I don’t care whether I really exist or don’t, whether I’m real or fictional. What I want right now is to be the person who decides my own fate. That’s something I can work on. It’s what I’m working on now.”
― John Scalzi, quote from Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas
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.