“Rover did not know in the least where the moon's path led to, and at present he was much too frightened and excited to ask, and anyway he was beginning to get used to extraordinary things happening to him.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from Roverandom
“I did nothing but run away from the time I was a puppy, and I kept on running and roving until one fine morning - a very fine morning, with the sun in my eyes - I fell over the world's edge chasing a butterfly.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from Roverandom
“Valour needs first strength, then a weapon.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from Roverandom
“A good vocabulary,’ he once wrote (April 1959), ‘is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one’s age-group. It comes from reading books above one”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from Roverandom
“Thank you,’ said Rover, feeling crushed. ‘It is very kind of all these wizards to trouble themselves about me, I am sure, though it is rather upsetting. You never know what will happen next, when once you get mixed up with wizards and their friends.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from Roverandom
“Now fly off and amuse yourself. Don’t worry the moonbeams, and don’t kill my white rabbits, and come home when you are hungry! The window on the roof is usually open. Good-bye!’ He vanished immediately into thin air; and anybody who has never been there will tell you how extremely thin the moon-air is.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from Roverandom
“That Tolkien also included in Roverandom words such as paraphernalia, and phosphorescent, primordial, and rigmarole, is refreshing in these later days when such language is considered too ‘difficult’ for young children – a view with which Tolkien would have disagreed. ‘A good vocabulary,’ he once wrote (April 1959), ‘is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one’s age-group. It comes from reading books above one’ (Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien [1981], pp. 298–9).”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from Roverandom
“he didn’t think the explanation explained.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from Roverandom
“Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Fiesta
“We need, in other words, to learn how to enjoy things without feeling entitled to them and without clinging to them.”
― William B. Irvine, quote from A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
“Most addicts here, he says, come with an empty glass inside them;66 when they take heroin, the glass becomes full, but only for a few hours, and then it drains down to nothing again. The purpose of this program is to gradually build a life for the addict so they can put something else into that empty glass: a social network, a job, some daily pleasures. If you can do that, it will mean that even as the heroin drains, you are not left totally empty. Over time, as your life has more in it, the glass will contain more and more, so it will take less and less heroin to fill it up. And in the end, there may be enough within you that you feel full without any heroin at all.”
― Johann Hari, quote from Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
“Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.”
― Robert McKee, quote from Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
“Upon the occasion of history's first manned flight - in the 1780's aboard the Montgolfier brothers' hot-air balloons - someone asked Franklin what use he saw in such frivolity. "What use," he replied, "is a newborn baby?”
― Mary Roach, quote from Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
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.