“From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
“My searchlight expired, but still I ran. I heard voices, and yowls, and echoes, but above all there gently rose that impious, insidious scurrying, gently rising, rising as a stiff bloated corpse gently rises above an oily river that flows under endless onyx bridges to a black putrid sea. Something bumped into me - something soft and plump. It must have been the rats; the viscous, gelatinous, ravenous army that feast on the dead and the living...”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
“That is what they say I said when they found me in the blackness after three hours; found me crouching in the blackness over the plump, half-eaten body of Capt. Norrys, with my own cat leaping and tearing at my throat....When I speak of poor Norrys they accuse me of a hideous thing, but they must know that I did not do it. They must know it was the rats; the slithering, scurrying rats whose scampering will never let me sleep; the daemon rats that race behind the padding in this room and beckon me down to greater horrors than I have ever known; the rats they can never hear; the rats, the rats in the walls.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
“And, most vivid of all, there was the dramatic epic of the rats - the scampering army of obscene vermin which had burst forth from the castle three months after the tragedy that doomed it to desertion - the lean, filthy, ravenous army which had swept all before it and devoured fowl, cats, dogs, hogs, sheep, and even two hapless human beings before its fury was spent.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
“This time I did not have to question the source of his snarls and hisses, and of the fear which made him sink his claws into my ankle, unconscious of their effect; for on every side of the chamber the walls were alive with nauseous sound - the verminous slithering of ravenous, gigantic rats.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
“Blame someone else, that’s always your first instinct. And if you can’t blame someone else, then start claiming the problem isn’t a problem anyway. Rewrite the rules, shift the goalposts.”
― Julian Barnes, quote from A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
“Life could not be entirely devoted to debauchery and monkeys. Magnus had to finance all the drinking somehow.”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from What Really Happened in Peru
“Tyranny is a habit which may be developed until at last it becomes a disease. I declare that the noblest nature can become so hardened and bestial that nothing distinguishes it from that of a wild animal. Blood and power intoxicate; they help to develop callousness and debauchery. The mind then becomes capable of the most abnormal cruelty, which it regards pleasure; the man and the citizen are swallowed up in the tyrant; and the return to human dignity, repentance, moral resurrection, becomes almost impossible.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The House of the Dead
“a cloudy cocktail called Smoke, made by mixing water and fuel alcohol. Smoke joints were tucked into the back of paint stores, drugstores, and markets, among the dry goods and the stacked cans.”
― Deborah Blum, quote from The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
“If you could envision the type of person God intended you to be, you would rise up and never be the same again.”
― Sean Covey, quote from The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Teens
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.