“Do you know a cure for me?"
"Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water."
"Salt water?" I asked him.
"Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was that God cannot stand continuance. No sooner has he created a season of a year, or a time of the day, than he wishes for something quite different, and sweeps it all away. No sooner was one a young man, and happy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage, martyrdom or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state of things. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast....Their art itself is nothing but the attempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one light, the momentary beauty of one woman or one flower, and make it everlasting.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“For really, dreaming is the well-mannered people's way of committing suicide.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“Where, My Lord, is music bred—upon the instrument or within the ear that listens? The loveliness of woman is created in the eye of man.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“She had what the Councillor knew, in the technical language of the ballet, as "ballon", a lightness that is not only the negation of weight, but which actually seems to carry upwards and make for flight, and which is rarely found in thin dancers - as if the matter itself had here become lighter than air, so that the more there is of it the better it works.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“Perhaps to them the first condition for anything having real charm was this: that it must not really exist.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon, human intercourse.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
Isak Dinesen
Born place: in Rungsted, Denmark
Born date April 17, 1885
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“Human existence must be a kind of error. It is bad today and every day it will get worse, until the worst of all happens.” My own philosophy was a little cheerier than Schopenhauer’s,”
― James Patterson, quote from Violets Are Blue
“La desgracia de Adam Appleby era que, en cuanto despertaba del sueño, su conciencia se inundaba inmediatamente de todo aquello en lo que menos deseaba pensar. Tenía la impresión de que otros hombres se enfrentaban a cada nuevo amanecer con la mente y el corazón renovados, llenos de optimismo y decisión; o bien de que se arrastraban ganduleando durante la primera hora del día en un estado de bendito sopor, incapaces de pensar en nada, ni agradable ni desagradable. Pero, agazapados como arpías en torno a su cama, los pensamientos desagradables esperaban para asaltarle tan pronto como Adam parpadease y abriera los ojos. En aquel momento se veía obligado, como alguien que se ahoga, a examinar su vida entera, dividido entre lamentaciones por el pasado y miedos futuros.”
― David Lodge, quote from The British Museum Is Falling Down
“The great boon of repression is that it makes it possible to live decisively in an overwhelmingly miraculous and incomprehensible world, a world so full of beauty, majesty, and terror that if animals perceived it all they would be paralyzed to act. ... What would the average man (sic) do with a full consciousness of absurdity? He has fashioned his character for the precise purpose of putting it between himself and the facts of life; it is his special tour-de-force that allows him to ignore incongruities, to nourish himself on impossibilities, to thrive on blindness. He accomplishes thereby a peculiarly human victory: the ability to be smug about terror.”
― Ernest Becker, quote from The Denial of Death
“graced lawn parties at Fernbank.” Hoppy stood and applauded.”
― Jan Karon, quote from A Light in the Window
“No one reveals himself more completely to others than to himself - that is, if he reveals himself at all.”
― Upamanyu Chatterjee, quote from English, August: An Indian Story
Deliverance
Love Unscripted
Pilgrim at Tinker Cr...
The Portable Dorothy...
Rule
South of the Border,...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.
