“Where are you from, Mr. Pendergast? Can't quite place the accent.”
“New Orleans.”
“What a coincidence! I went there for Mardi Gras once."
“How nice for you. I myself have never attended.”
Ludwig paused, the smile frozen on his face, wondering how to steer the conversation onto a more pertinent topic.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Still Life With Crows
“I have found that liars in the end communicate more truth than do truth tellers.” “How’s that?” “Because truth is the safest lie.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Still Life With Crows
“quotation from Einstein: ‘The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.’ I would suggest to Dr. Chauncy that in combination, the two qualities are even more alarming.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Still Life With Crows
“Chauncy made a huge effort to control himself. “I had lunch at Maisie’s Diner.”
“And?”
“And what? It was the most revolting lunch it has been my misfortune to consume.”
“And after?”
“Diarrhea, of course.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Still Life With Crows
“She picked up the book she was reading, Beyond the Ice Limit, found her dog-eared place at the beginning of chapter six, and began to read. The sea horizon lay against the sky, blue against perfect blue, and it seemed to beckon the ship southward, ever southward. She closed the book, put it down again. Not bad, but it lacked the punch of the original.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Still Life With Crows
“As the person who is principally interested in any event is pleased with our sympathy, and hurt by the want of it, so we, too, seem to be pleased when we are able to sympathize with him, and to be hurt when we are unable to do so. We run not only to congratulate the successful, but to condole with the afflicted; and the pleasure which we find in the conversation of one whom in all the passions of his heart we can entirely sympathize with, seems to do more than compensate the painfulness of that sorrow with which the view of his situation affects us. On the contrary, it is always disagreeable to feel that we cannot sympathize with him, and instead of being pleased with this exemption from sympathetic pain, it hurts us to find that we cannot share his uneasiness. If we hear a person loudly lamenting his misfortunes, which, however, upon bringing the case home to ourselves, we feel, can produce no such violent effect upon us, we are shocked at his grief; and, because we cannot enter into it, call it pusillanimity and weakness. It gives us the spleen, on the other hand, to see another too happy or too much elevated, as we call it, with any little piece of good fortune. We are disobliged even with his joy; and, because we cannot go along with it, call it levity and folly. We are even put out of humour if our companion laughs louder or longer at a joke than we think it deserves; that is, than we feel that we ourselves could laugh at it.”
― Adam Smith, quote from The Theory of Moral Sentiments
“Our own attitude is that we are charged with discovering the best way of doing everything.”
― Mark Graban, quote from Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction
“Far below, the ocean was a bluegray rug being pulled out from beneath us.”
― Roger Zelazny, quote from This Immortal
“If we’re going to be fucked, Colonel, I prefer to get fucked on my feet instead of on my knees.”
― John Scalzi, quote from The Ghost Brigades
“The outsider is not sure who he is. He has found an “I”, but it is not his true “I”.’ His main business is to find his way back to himself.”
― Colin Wilson, quote from The Outsider
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.