Quotes from Selected Letters

“I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.”
― Martha Gellhorn, quote from Selected Letters

“Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it”
― Martha Gellhorn, quote from Selected Letters

“And this urge to run away from what I love is a sort of sadism I no longer pretend to understand.”
― Martha Gellhorn, quote from Selected Letters

“It is much harder to be lonely, when you have for a while stopped being lonely. I was used to having only myself, cold and hard as that is; I could live with it. And now I wait, for a voice, a face, a body, that is not going to be here, is not mine, does not in any case wait as I do, nor share this homesickness. […] How to explain that I taught myself to be tough and indifferent, because it mattered too much and learned not even to weep in my mind not to notice.”
― Martha Gellhorn, quote from Selected Letters

“I love you. Have a hell of a good time. I don’t really know what else is worth having.”
― Martha Gellhorn, quote from Selected Letters

“People do not yet realize (because the mind isn't built that way) what war can be. They fear it but surely they fear it the way children fear nightmares, dimly, without definite images in their heads of how it will all work out.”
― Martha Gellhorn, quote from Selected Letters

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Popular quotes

“He didn't think it possible to sign sewage-sucking-excuse-of-a-baseborn-bilge-rat but somehow Gurn managed.”
― Grace Draven, quote from Master of Crows

“Break the character and independence of your man and you will have an obedient trooper.”
― Jan Valtin, quote from Out of the Night: The Memoir of Richard Julius Herman Krebs alias Jan Valtin

“For he is not poor who has little; only he that desires much … and true security lies not in the things one has but in the things one can do without.”
― Og Mandino, quote from The Greatest Miracle in the World

“...legitimacy is based on three things. First of all, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice--that if they speak up, they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the authority has to be fair. It can't treat one group differently from another.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, quote from David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (Audio CD)

“If you are never alone, you cannot know yourself.”
― Paulo Coelho, quote from Akras manuskripts

Interesting books

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.