“That's how birthdays were in our house. All hateful charades of pretty clothes, expensive presents, and ugly words . . .”
― Debbie Howells, quote from The Bones of You
“I discover, too, that grief is different to different people. Comes in many guises. In shocked silences and closed doors around our village, as people try to shut it out. That a blank face or fleeting smile can hide the worst, most private kind of agony.”
― Debbie Howells, quote from The Bones of You
“In my experience, bossy women seldom get themselves murdered. I can't think why not. When you come to think of it, it's rather a pity.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side
“No offense to hot girls everywhere- but newsflash- there are hot girls everywhere.”
― Tammara Webber, quote from Between the Lines
“So the Wolf had killed a time or two. Big deal. He was a wolf! What did they expect? That he’d lick his balls all day and howl at the moon?”
― Marie Hall, quote from Her Mad Hatter
“the king of kind hearts and polite fellows”
― Herman Melville, quote from Benito Cereno
“After having denounced the absurdities of utopia, let us deal with its merits, and, since men accommodate
social arrangements so well and scarcely distinguish from them the evils immanent within them, let us do
as they do, let us unite ourselves with their unconsciousness.
We shall never praise the utopias sufficiently for having denounced the crimes of ownership, the
horror property represents, the calamities it causes. Great or small, the owner is corrupted, sullied in his essence: his corruption is projected onto the merest object he touches or appropriates. Whether his
“fortune” is threatened or stripped from him, he will be compelled to a consciousness of which he is
normally incapable. In order to reassume a human appearance, in order to regain his “soul,” he must be
ruined and must consent to his ruin. In this, the revolution will help him. By restoring him to his primal
nakedness, it annihilates him in the immediate future and saves him in the absolute, for it liberates—
inwardly, it is understood—those whom it strikes first: the haves; it reclassifies them, it restores to them
their former dimension and leads them back to the values they have betrayed. But even before having the
means or the occasion to strike them, the revolution sustains in them a salutary fear: it troubles their sleep,
nourishes their nightmares, and nightmare is the beginning of a metaphysical awakening. Hence it is as an
agent of destruction that the revolution is seen to be useful; however deadly, one thing always redeems it:
it alone knows what kind of terror to use in order to shake up this world of owners, the crudest of all
possible worlds. Every form of possession, let us not hesitate to insist, degrades, debases, flatters the
monster sleeping deep within each of us. To own even a broom, to count anything at all as our property, is
to participate in the general infamy. What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you—what a
revelation! You took yourself for the last of men, and now, suddenly, astonished and virtually enlightened
by your destitution, you no longer suffer from it; quite the contrary, you pride yourself in it. And all you
still desire is to be as indigent as a saint or a madman.”
― Emil M. Cioran, quote from History and Utopia
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.