“No, Sir, his manners are such that he would not know how to ask a woman to accept his service, although his looks are of Love's color.”
― Wolfram von Eschenbach, quote from Parzival
“Then the King of Arragon pushed old Utepandragun over his horse’s tail down on to the meadow – the King of Britain! – where he lay in a bed of flowers!”
― Wolfram von Eschenbach, quote from Parzival
“Alas that he did not ask the question then! I still sorrow for him on that account. For when the sword was put into his hand, it was a sign to him that he should ask. And I pity too his sweet host whom God's displeasure does not spare and who could have been freed from it by a question.”
― Wolfram von Eschenbach, quote from Parzival
“Sir, if you are otherwise discreet, you will consider that you have gone far enough. At my brother's request I am treating you no less kindly than Ampflise treated my uncle Gahmuret, without going to bed together. My kindness would in the long run outweigh hers, if anyone were to weigh us properly. And besides, Sir, I don't know who you are, and yet in such a short space of time you want to have my love.”
― Wolfram von Eschenbach, quote from Parzival
“The guest perceived his host's sorrow, for he had recounted it so clearly, and he said, "Sir, I am not wise, but if I ever win knightly fame so that I am fit to ask for love, you shall give me Liaze your daughter, the lovely maid. You have told me too much sorrow. If I can relieve it then, I will not let you bear so great a burden of it.”
― Wolfram von Eschenbach, quote from Parzival
“I am told that Meljanz also had adorned himself richly for battle. His courage too was high, and he rode a handsome Castilian which Meljacanz had won from Keie when he flung him so high with his thrust that Keie was caught on the branch of a tree and hung there.”
― Wolfram von Eschenbach, quote from Parzival
“That is beside the point. If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable. And if we wish to push our own individual advantage, as we see it, then we will always find reason to believe that some hampering rule is unjust and unreasonable. What starts, then, as a shrewd trick ends in anarchy and disaster, even for the shrewd trickster, since he, too, will not survive the collapse of society.” Trevize”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Earth
“I was thirteen when I saw my mother die, when I told my story. When I started “having a hard time,” as my grandfather likes to say. Would they have locked me up if I’d been thirty? If I’d been a boy? It’s a question I do not dare to ask.”
― Ally Carter, quote from All Fall Down
“For men, the softer emotions are always intertwined with power and pride. That was why Karna waited for me to plead with him though he could have stopped my suffering with a single world. That was why he turned on me when I refused to ask for his pity. That was why he incited Dussasan to an action that was against the code of honor by which he lived his life. He knew he would regret it—in his fierce smile there had already been a glint of pain.
But was a woman's heart any purer, in the end?
That was the final truth I learned. All this time I'd thought myself better than my father, better than all those men who inflicted harm on a thousand innocents in order to punish the one man who had wronged them. I'd thought myself above the cravings that drove him. But I, too, was tainted with them, vengeance encoded into my blood. When the moment came I couldn't resist it, no more than a dog can resist chewing a bone that, splintering, makes his mouth bleed.
Already I was storing these lessons inside me. I would use them over the long years of exile to gain what I wanted, no matter what its price.
But Krishna, the slippery one, the one who had offered me a different solace, Krishna with his disappointed eyes—what was the lesson he'd tried to teach?”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Palace of Illusions
“Until the eighteenth century, people believed that biblical paradise, the Garden of Eden, was a real place. It appeared on maps--located, ironically, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in what is now modern-day Iraq.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“They just sat there looking back at me. The orange queen was clacking her typewriter. Cop talk was no more treat for her than legs to a dance director. They had the calm weathered faces of healthy men in hard condition. They had the eyes they always have, cloudy and grey like freezing water. The firm set mouth, the hard little wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, the hard hollow meaningless stare, not quite cruel and a thousand miles from kind. The dull ready-made clothes, worn without style, with a sort of contempt; the look of men who are poor and yet proud of their power, watching always for ways to make it felt, to shove it into you and twist it and grin and watch you squirm, ruthless without malice, cruel and yet not always unkind. What would you expect them to be? Civilization had no meaning for them. All they saw of it was the failures, the dirt, the dregs, the aberrations and the disgust.”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from The Little Sister
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.