“More often than we care to admit, inconsequential decisions change our lives.”
― Donald McCaig, quote from Rhett Butler's People
“I'm afraid, Belle, that being a lady is more than proper clothes. It is an attitude. From your...experience, you may know more of business and politics than ladies are supposed to know. Gentlemen are pleased to think ladies are ornamental, and it is an ill-advised ornament who contradicts her gentleman.”
― Donald McCaig, quote from Rhett Butler's People
“You see, sister, little Miss Scarlett has no idea who she is. Her chraming tricks attract men who are unworthy of her. "Rhett's voice dropped to a whisper. "Hindoos believe we have had lives before this. Is it true? He raised a mocking eyebrow. Perhaps Scarlett and I were star-crossed lovers; perhaps we died in each other's arms...”
― Donald McCaig, quote from Rhett Butler's People
“He said, 'Life has hurt us again.'
A worse hurt than those hurts we have already endured?'
No,' he said, 'I suppose not.”
― Donald McCaig, quote from Rhett Butler's People
“Rosemary, in his heart your brother is a lover. The shrewd businessman, the adventurer, the dandy are but costumes the lover wears. ”
― Donald McCaig, quote from Rhett Butler's People
“Patriotic'? Dear, dear me!" Scarlett covered her mouth in mock astonishment. "I didn't know that was 'patriotism.' I believe what you intended has ruder names, though no well-bred Georgia lady would admit to knowing them.”
― Donald McCaig, quote from Rhett Butler's People
“Frederick Ward thought novels immoral and had been known to leave the room rather than subject himself to "bohemian" opinions.”
― Donald McCaig, quote from Rhett Butler's People
“Do you believe your gentle birth will turn a bullet?"
"Why, yes," Rhett said solemnly. "Hell yes! Gentle birth's got to be good for something!”
― Donald McCaig, quote from Rhett Butler's People
“I never saw a sky so blue. Rhett, it's worth living a man's whole life, if, just once, just one time, he gets to see a sky that blue.”
― Donald McCaig, quote from Rhett Butler's People
“TO BE A TOURIST is to escape accountability. Errors and failings don't cling to you the way they do back home. You're able to drift across continents and languages, suspending the operation of sound thought. Tourism is the march of stupidity. You're expected to be stupid. The entire mechanism of the host country is geared to travelers acting stupidly. You walked around dazed, squinting into fold-out maps. You don't know how to talk to people, how to get anywhere, what the money means, what time it is, what to eat or how to eat it. Being stupid is the pattern, the level and the norm. You can exist on this level for weeks and months without reprimand or dire consequence. Together with thousands, you are granted immunities and broad freedoms. You are an army of fools, wearing bright polyesters, riding camels, taking pictures of each other, haggard, dysentric, thirsty. There is nothing to think about but the next shapeless event.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from The Names
“See," he said, "the arrow struck against this. It is the kiss I gave her. It has saved her life.”
― J.M. Barrie, quote from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens / Peter and Wendy
“Dreams are imperfections of sleep; even so is consciousness the imperfection of waking.
Dreams are impurities in the circulation of the blood; even so it's consciousness a disorder of life.
Dreams are without proportion, without good sense, without truth; so also is consciousness.
Awake from dream, the truth is known: awake from waking. The truth is: The Unknown”
― Aleister Crowley, quote from The Book of Lies
“A sensation rose in him, a high tingling of his blood. There came a wave, a wind that recognized him, that did not love him or hate him. He felt what he knew as the rising of his self, the shifting innerness that yearned and feared, that was more familiar to him than anything could ever be. He knew that an answering substance gathered around him, emanating from the trees and the stars.
He stood staring at the constellations. Walt had sent him here, to find this, and he understood. He thought he understood. This was his heaven. It was not Broadway or the horse on wheels. It was grass and silence; it was a field of stars. It was what the book told him, night after night. When he died he would leave his defective body and turn into grass. He would be here like this, forever. There was no reason to fear it, because it was part of him. What he'd thought of as his emptiness, his absence of soul, was only a yearning for this.”
― Michael Cunningham, quote from Specimen Days
“That is one thing I've learned, that it is possible to really understand things at certain points, and not be able to retain them, to be in utter confusion just a short while later. I used to think that once you really knew a thing, its truth would shine on forever. Now it's pretty obvious to me that more often than not the batteries fade, and sometimes what you knew even goes out with a bang when you try to call on it, just like a lightbulb cracking off when you throw the switch.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Truth and Beauty
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.
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