“Sooner or later, all games become serious.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes
“If their work is satisfying people don't need leisure in the old-fashioned sense. No one ever asks what Newton or Darwin did to relax, or how Bach spent his weekends. At Eden-Olympia work is the ultimate play, and play the ultimate work.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes
“The twentieth century ended with its dreams in ruins. The notion of the community as a voluntary association of enlightened citizens has died forever. We realize how suffocatingly humane we've become, dedicated to moderation and the middle way. The suburbanization of the soul has overrun our planet like the plague.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes
“The house was silent, but somewhere in the garden was a swimming pool filled with unsettled water.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes
“The film festival measured a mile in length, from the Martinez to the Vieux Port, where sales executives tucked into their platters of fruits de mer, but was only fifty yards deep. For a fortnight the Croisette and its grand hotels willingly became a facade, the largest stage set in the world. Without realizing it, the crowds under the palm trees were extras recruited to play their traditional roles. As they cheered and hooted, they were far more confident than the film actors on display, who seemed ill at ease when they stepped from their limos, like celebrity criminals ferried to a mass trial by jury at the Palais, a full-scale cultural Nuremberg furnished with film clips of the atrocities they had helped to commit.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes
“I love the smell of male urine and the reek of his groin on my bath towels after he’d had a shower”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes
“People no longer need enemies--in this millennium their great dream is to become victims. Only their psychopathies can set them free...”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes
“Nothing about sex ever shocks women. At least, men’s kind of sex.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Super-Cannes
J.G. Ballard
Born place: in Shanghai, China
Born date November 15, 1930
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“We cannot know the future. All we can do is face it bravely. We should take heed of those we love and respect. But in the end, we make every decision alone.”
― Juliet Marillier, quote from Seer of Sevenwaters
“When we understand the character of God, when we grasp something of His holiness, then we begin to understand the radical character of our sin and hopelessness. Helpless sinners can survive only by grace. Our strength is futile in itself; we are spiritually impotent without the assistance of a merciful God. We may dislike giving our attention to God's wrath and justice, but until we incline ourselves to these aspects of God's nature, we will never appreciate what has been wrought for us by grace. Even Edwards's sermon on sinners in God's hands was not designed to stress the flames of hell. The resounding accent falls not on the fiery pit but on the hands of the God who holds us and rescues us from it. The hands of God are gracious hands. They alone have the power to rescue us from certain destruction.”
― R.C. Sproul, quote from The Holiness of God
“A woman who likes her whisky,” he said while refilling her glass. “Careful that you doona steal my heart, Annalía.” “It figures that the one requirement you’d have for your woman is ‘whisky drinker.’” “Aye, but that’s only after ‘walks upright.”
― Kresley Cole, quote from If You Dare
“Men mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the center of everything. That was their greatest conceit. The earth is becoming warmer-it must be our fault! The mountain is destroying us-we have not propitiated the gods! It rains too much, it rains too little-a comfort to think that these things are somehow connected to our behavior, that if only we lived a little better, a little more frugally, our virtue would be rewarded. But here was nature, sweeping toward him-unknowable, all-conquering, indifferent-and he saw in her fires the futility of human pretensions.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“- Obedecer à sociedade? ... - replicou a marquesa, mostrando-se horrorizada. - É daí, senhor, que provêm todos os males. Deus não fez nem uma só lei para a nossa desgraça. Porém, os homens, reunindo-se, falsearam a sua obra. Nós, as mulheres, somo mais maltratadas pela civilização do que fomos pela natureza. Esta impõe-nos penas físicas que os homens não suavizaram, e a civilização desenvolveu sentimentos que eles enganam incessantemente. A natureza sufoca os seres fracos, os homens condenam-nos a viver para lhes oferecerem uma constante desgraça. O casamento, instituição em que hoje se funda a sociedade, faz-nos sentir todo o seu peso: para o homem a liberdade, para as mulheres os deveres. Nós lhes devemos toda a nossa vida, eles devem-nos apenas raros instantes. (...) Pois bem, o casamento, tal como hoje se efetua, afigura-se-me uma prostituição legal. Daí provieram todos os meus sofrimentos. (...) Fui a própria autora do mal, tendo desejado esse casamento.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from A Woman Of Thirty
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Flora & Ulysses: The...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.
