“Nothing a man suffers will prevent him from inflicting suffering on others. Indeed, it will teach him the way”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Money is sacred as everyone knows... So then must be the hunger for it and the means we use to obtain it. Once a man is in debt he becomes a flesh and blood form of money, a walking investment. You can do what you like with him, you can work him to death or you can sell him. This cannot be called cruelty or greed because we are seeking only to recover our investment and that is a sacred duty.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Love does not stand still, as everyone knows; it is always adding to its own shape whether by advance or retreat. Wounds can be absorbed, but only like elements embodied in a story; they are always there, part of the meaning.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“A man may go through life and remain ignorant of himself he may think himself as other than he truly is and he may die with this illusion still intact because no circumstance of his life has obliged him to revise it.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Only way to live here is day by day, same as anywhere.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“But what a man sees still must depend on what he looks for. While I have eyes of my own, I shall not need to borrow yours.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“There are no stronger fetters than those we forge for ourselves.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“The mind is constituted to accept the god of the more powerful. If you have to choose between the god of the slave owner and the god of the enslaved, naturally you will choose the former . . .”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“The flood of cheap manufactures, for which the people have no need,destroys their industries. They become dependent on this trade and the demand for goods can only be met by enslaving their fellows.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“The kneading of memory makes the dough of fiction, which, as we know, can go on yeasting for ever...”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Numbers of men are getting richer and greater numbers are getting poorer. Alas, both classes have higher expectations these days. In Short, sir, there has been a leap in bribes.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“I was born for better things.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Doubt is the ally of hope, not its enemy, and together they made all the blessing he had.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“The successful cannot be unhappy -- it was a contradiction in terms.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Grief works its own perversions and betrayals; the shape of what we have lost is as subject to corruption as the mortal body...”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Sometimes in storm weather the shore had fluttered with disabled swallows. They crouched lower for his approach, without strength to escape. In his hands they pulsed with that same pulse. He had taken a bird and warmed it between his hands or inside his jacket, brought the life back until it was able to fly. Sometimes, released from his hands, they circled once around him before flying away; in gratitude, or so the child had believed--and the belief had survived all the man's science.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“At the same time he could hardly believe what he had been reading. It struck him as verging on madness. This wild confession, this owing to a crime so outlandish, so totally different from the true ones of mating and theft of the negroes, outraged him with its insolence and perversity. In the conflict of these feelings Erasmus was swept by doubt and loneliness. His whole being seemed under threat of dissolution. What became of law, of legitimacy, of established order, if a man could assume such attitudes of private morality, decide for himself where his fault lay? It turned everything upside down. He could think of nothing more damnable. And yet… He remembered suddenly the second, rarer smile his cousin had, the one that came slowly, transforming his face. Briefly, unwillingly, Erasmus glimpsed the possibility of freedom.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“It is everyone's bounden duty to try to get more than they have got already. If you have got two shillin' you try to make it into four shillin' . . . there is no end to it.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“But that sacred hunger we spoke of justifies all.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“The heart is a vital organ, but it is a faulty guide to conduct. It is the mind makes judgements and comparisons, furnishes evidence on which ideas of truth can be founded.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Those confiding their pain cannot know at the outset how much they will be required to relive it.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“No latitude makes any difference to what men will do to other men, whether for gain or in the name of justice.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“It is always through arbitrary combinations that experience enslaves the memory.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“A little bit of kindness goes a long way with women.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Wilson had been killed by everybody. It was this that made his death special, the children had been told. It was justice, it was all the people showing how much they hated this crime. Killing was justice when everybody joined in.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“A man can live free and not seek to limit the freedom of others so long as no one seeks to limit his.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“When you in de right you heart strong you no 'fraid nottin'.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Useful thing a warrant. Murder and theft change their names if you have one.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“The kind of truth that can be asserted by argument had lost all glamour, all lustre, for him, seeming no more now than another aspect of that ancient urge - much older than the desire for truth - to command attention, dominate one's fellows.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Justice is a mighty fine thing.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
Barry Unsworth
Born place: in Wingate, The United Kingdom
Born date August 8, 1930
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“I wanted to pull down a book, open it proper, and gobble up page after page”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Chains
“Uncle seemed to take pleasure from knowing things other people didn’t. Silas did not like thinking this about the man who’d given them a place to live, but there was a sort of smirk hidden inside his uncle’s words that made Silas feel like he was being laughed at. He knew that tone. He’d heard it often enough from kids at school, from the ones who’d look at you like you weren’t worth talking to, from the ones who looked at your unfashionable clothes, or the shape of your face, and told everyone else that you were a freak. Silas was scared of those kids, because usually, those were the ones who didn’t think that normal rules applied to them, the ones who thought they could get away with anything.”
― Ari Berk, quote from Death Watch
“And therefore education at the University mostly worked by the age-old method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of inns and taverns for exactly the same reason.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Interesting Times
“You do realize that you are addressing the emperor of the Crescent Empire."
"And you are addressing a free woman of the desert. You are not my emperor. Therefore, I am your equal.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, quote from Vessel
“Imagination is all about new possibilities, eventualities that don’t exist, counterfactuals, a recombination of elements in new ways. It is about the untested. And the untested is uncertain. It is frightening—even”
― Maria Konnikova, quote from Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes
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Season of Migration...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.
