Quotes from The Birth of Venus

Sarah Dunant ·  427 pages

Rating: (84.6K votes)


“The Devil may take the reckless, but the good will surely die of boredom. Boredom and frustration.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from The Birth of Venus


“Someone told me much later that you always know the people who are going to make a difference in your life, from the very first time you set eyes on them, even if you do not like them at all. And I had noticed him, as he had me. God help us.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from The Birth of Venus


“So if we could not have love, my husband and I, then at least I could have alchemy.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from The Birth of Venus


“If you love a man for his honesty, you cannot become angry when he shows it.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from The Birth of Venus


“It was so cold. In the monastery. Sometimes the wind came from the sea with ice in it... It could freeze the skin off your face. Once the snow was so deep we couldn't get out of the doors to the woodshed. A monk jumped from a window. He sank into a drift and took a long time to get up. That night, they made me sleep next to the stove. I was small, thin, like a piece of birch bark. But then the Stove went out.
Father Bernard took me into his cell... It was he who first gave me chalk and paper. He was so old his eyes his eyes looked as if he was crying. But he was never sad. In winter he had fewer blankets than the others. He said he didn't need them because God warmed him.
(...)
But even Father Bernard was cold that night. He laid me down on the bed next to him, wrapped me in an animal skin, then in his own arms. He told me stories about Jesus. How His love could wake the dead and how with Him in one's heart one could heat the world... When I woke it was light. The snow had stopped. I was warm. But he was cold. I gave him the skin but his body was stiff. I didn't know what to do. I got out a piece of paper from his chest under the bed and drew him, lying there. His face had a smile on it. I knew that God had been there when he died. That now He was in me, and because of Father Bernard I would be warm forever.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from The Birth of Venus



“And, such was the sound that the chorus made together, that to have been a part of it at all was enough for me.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from The Birth of Venus


“There is more glory in peace than in war,”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from The Birth of Venus


“Together he [Girolamo Savonarola] and his archenemy Lorenzo [de' Medici] would have been the stuff of gargoyles. One could almost imagine the diptych in which their profiles confronted each other, their noses as powerful as their personalities.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from The Birth of Venus


“Someone told me much later that you always know the people who are going to make a difference in your life, from the very first time you set eyes on them, even if you do not like them at all.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from The Birth of Venus


“Either you’re standing under your haloes, eyes up to heaven, or you’re munching apples in their faces and flashing your bush. I’m not even sure they know which one they prefer. The best you can do is choose when you change your costume”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from The Birth of Venus



About the author

Sarah Dunant
Born place: in London, The United Kingdom
Born date August 8, 1950
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“There is one thing I've learned about people: they don't get that mean and nasty overnight. It's not human nature. But if you give people enough time, eventually they'll do the most heartbreaking stuff in the world.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice


“Fucking was easy. It was this intimacy between two people that destroyed your heart so you couldn’t see anything else but the bitch before you, giving you something you never knew you even needed.”
― Tillie Cole, quote from Heart Recaptured


“It began with an email. ‘I am a senior member of the intelligence community …”
― Luke Harding, quote from The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man


“Shh,” she said sternly, as if Luc had been the one who’d just let out the caterwaul.”
― Lynsay Sands, quote from Single White Vampire


“None of us ever know what we are choosing when we choose life. If certainty is so important to you, than you should have chosen to be dead. That is a certain thing.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from Forest Mage


Interesting books

Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature
(575)
Written in Stone: Ev...
by Brian Switek
The Jesus Incident
(4.5K)
The Jesus Incident
by Frank Herbert
Return to Stantasyland
(3)
The Janus Affair
(3.5K)
The New Life
(5.9K)
The New Life
by Orhan Pamuk
The Maelstrom
(2.9K)
The Maelstrom
by Henry H. Neff

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.