“First ambitions are best. We are less brave later.”
― Andrew Miller, quote from Pure
“The poverty of the villages is almost picturesque from the windows of a coach that is not stopping.”
― Andrew Miller, quote from Pure
“Like everyone else in the house, she suffers from dreams.”
― Andrew Miller, quote from Pure
“She knows about men, knows a good deal of the world's character. But it is hard, whatever you have endured, to give up on love. Hard to stop thinking of it as a home you might one day find again. More than hard.”
― Andrew Miller, quote from Pure
“The visit, like all visits home for a long time now, has been an obscure failure. When is it we cease to be able to go back, truly go back? What secret door is it that closes?”
― Andrew Miller, quote from Pure
“Why are there no handsome priest in Paris? One has no inclination to confess anything to an ugly man.”
― Andrew Miller, quote from Pure
“I’m going to play,’ says Armand, lacing his fingers and cracking the knuckles. ‘A pair of these lads can pump for me.’
‘Is this a time for playing?’ asks Jean Baptiste. Then, ‘You are right. You have never been more so.”
― Andrew Miller, quote from Pure
“Could he not go to hospital?' asks Jean-Baptiste.
The doctor flares his nostrils. 'Hospitals are very dangerous places. Particularly to one already weakened by illness.”
― Andrew Miller, quote from Pure
“And there in the darkness of the hotel room, scarcely more than twenty-four hours before the maybe end of the world, the three of them managed to laugh together. It turned out that no amount of terror could stop the great human need to connect. Or maybe, Anita thought, terror was actually at the heart of that need. After all, every life ended in an apocalypse, in one way or another.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Sometimes I forget why I feel that way, I just have this feeling that something bad has happened to me and affected my life.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Year I Met You
“Mere children, ha!" said Jane. "I say we tie up the knave and then discuss his fate."
Since everyone thought this a good idea, Batty and Hound donated Jeffrey's neckties, and soon Bug Man, aka Sock or Spock, aka Norman Birnbaum, was bound hand and foot. Jane, Batty, and Hound then took a few minutes to be Aztec priests calling for blood, until Rosalind quieted them down. Norman was slime, but that was no reason to terrify him.
Then came a long discussion about what they should do next... Jane's suggestion of throwing Norman into their basement so that he could dwell on his sins was rejected outright.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks on Gardam Street
“I think you're beautiful. And rare. Fierce but... delicate at the same time.”
― Karole Cozzo, quote from How to Keep Rolling After a Fall
“The only way death is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater: a family, a community, a society. If you don’t, mortality is only a horror. But if you do, it is not. Loyalty, said Royce, “solves the paradox of our ordinary existence by showing us outside of ourselves the cause which is to be served, and inside of ourselves the will which delights to do this service, and which is not thwarted but enriched and expressed in such service.” In more recent times, psychologists have used the term “transcendence” for a version of this idea. Above the level of self-actualization in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they suggest the existence in people of a transcendent desire to see and help other beings achieve their potential.”
― Atul Gawande, quote from Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
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.