Quotes from Outlaws of the Marsh

“Hu’s heart clanged like fifteen buckets in a single well.”
― Shi Nai'an, quote from Outlaws of the Marsh

“When I tell you you’ll fart and pee in your pants with terror.”
― Shi Nai'an, quote from Outlaws of the Marsh

“The old woman’s face was wreathed in smiles.”
― Shi Nai'an, quote from Outlaws of the Marsh

“Truly, flowers open, only to be blown down by the wind.”
― Shi Nai'an, quote from Outlaws of the Marsh

“Li Gui called out, "Sir, if you kill me you will kill two persons."

"How do you make that out?" asked Li Kui, staying the blow.

"At home I support my mother who is ninety years of age, and this is my only means of helping her in her old age," said Li Gui. "I never injure people, but only make them afraid. If you kill me, my old mother will die of starvation."

Li Kui who never twinkled his eyes in chopping off people's heads, paused and thought when he heard this. "Here am I trying to succour my old mother, and yet killing a man who supports his old mother. Heaven will not allow me to live if I do this. No! No! I will forgive this man.

(J.H. Jackson translation)”
― Shi Nai'an, quote from Outlaws of the Marsh

About the author

Popular quotes

“A true Democratic Spirit is up there with religious faith and emotional maturity and all those other top-of-the-Maslow-Pyramid-type qualities that people spend their whole lives working on. A Democratic Spirit's constituent rigor and humility and self-honesty are, in fact, so hard to maintain on certain issues that it's almost irresistibly tempting to fall in with some established dogmatic camp and to follow that camp's line on the issue and to let your position harden within the camp and become inflexible and to believe that he other camps are either evil or insane and to spend all your time and energy trying to shout over them.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

“she watched his face because she hoped it would betray some indication of her own reality – some flicker of interest or concentration of notice which might indicate that she was actually present with another person.”
― Stephen R. Donaldson, quote from The Mirror of Her Dreams

“حين يصل الكاتب عادة إلى الصفحة الأخيرة، تكون أغلى أمنية لديه أن يقرأ الناس كتابه بعد مائة أو مائتي عام. وبالطبع، لا يمكن التكهن بذلك، فهناك كتب أراد لها مؤلفوها الخلود ثم انطفأت غداة صدورها، في حين أن كتاباً قد يبقى، وكنا نخاله مجرد ترفيه لتلامذة المدراس. غير أن الأمل لا يفارقنا. أما هذا الكتاب الذي ليس ترفيهاً ولا عملاً أدبياً، فسوف أتمنى بشأنه عكس ذلك، أن يكتشفه حفيدي يوماً، وقد أصبح راشداً، مصادفةً في مكتبة العائلة، فيتصفحه ويقرأ بعض صفحاته، ثم يعيده فوراً إلى الرف المغطى بالغبار حيث تناوله، مستخفاً ومندهشاً للحاجة إلى قول هذه الأمور في الزمن الذي عاش فيه جده..”
― Amin Maalouf, quote from In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

“... her conviction that love that did not find its expression in a letter was not perfect.”
― Ian McEwan, quote from Enduring Love

“I seemed to be upon the verge of comprehension, without the power to comprehend as men, at time, find themselves upon the brink of rememberance, without being able, in the end, to remember.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales

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.