Quotes from Picnic at Hanging Rock

Joan Lindsay ·  189 pages

Rating: (7.8K votes)


“Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place.”
― Joan Lindsay, quote from Picnic at Hanging Rock


“Although we are necessarily concerned, in a chronicle of events, with physical action by the light of day, history suggests that the human spirit wanders farthest in the silent hours between midnight and dawn. Those dark fruitful hours, seldom recorded, whose secret flowerings breed peace and war, loves and hates, the crowning or uncrowning of heads.”
― Joan Lindsay, quote from Picnic at Hanging Rock


“Marion Quade, the only member of the class to take Pythagoras in her stride, was a favourite pupil, in the sense that a savage who understands a few words of the language of a shipwrecked sailor is a favourite savage.”
― Joan Lindsay, quote from Picnic at Hanging Rock


“Except for those people over there with the wagonette we might be the only living creatures in the whole world,’ said Edith, airily dismissing the entire animal kingdom at one stroke.”
― Joan Lindsay, quote from Picnic at Hanging Rock


“Insulated from natural contacts with earth, air and sunlight, by corsets pressing on the solar plexus, by voluminous petticoats, cotton stockings and kid boots, the drowsy well-fed girls lounging in the shade were no more a part of their environment than figures in a photograph album, arbitrarily posed against a backcloth of cork rocks and cardboard trees.”
― Joan Lindsay, quote from Picnic at Hanging Rock



“Sometimes just to look at Miranda’s calm oval face and straight corn-yellow hair gave her a sharp little stab of pleasure.”
― Joan Lindsay, quote from Picnic at Hanging Rock


“Why is it, Miranda,’ she whispered, ‘that such a sweet pretty creature is a schoolteacher – of all dreary things in the world . . .?”
― Joan Lindsay, quote from Picnic at Hanging Rock


About the author

Joan Lindsay
Born place: in St. Kilda, Australia
Born date November 16, 1896
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“You have the most beautiful body I've ever seen.”
― Monica Murphy, quote from One Week Girlfriend


“Fear and a secret are two different things,” I remind him, pointing out the difference in the two phrases.  “Often they come together. A secret that leads to fear in one way, shape, or form.”
― Lisa Renee Jones, quote from Escaping Reality


“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, quote from We Should All Be Feminists


“She has more issues than the New York Times.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants


“His suspicion that he was not going in the right direction tortmented him more and more. At last he had the conviction that he would never go anywhere but in the wrong direction, to the very end of the handful of days that was left to him, unhappy moonstruck pilgrim, whose April was to be cut off short.”
― Ismail Kadare, quote from Broken April


Interesting books

The Road Back
(3.4K)
The Road Back
by Erich Maria Remarque
The Piper's Son
(10.4K)
The Piper's Son
by Melina Marchetta
QB VII
(26.2K)
QB VII
by Leon Uris
Left Drowning
(22.6K)
Left Drowning
by Jessica Park
Rebel Spring
(23.3K)
Rebel Spring
by Morgan Rhodes
Home Front
(44.3K)
Home Front
by Kristin Hannah

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.