“The cruelest thing you can do to a person who's living in panic is to offer him or her hope that turns out false. When the crash comes its intolerable.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy
“Perhaps conscience did not always produce cowards. Sometimes it made a man feel better about himself.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy
“You know, Mr. Webb, you have two commands you use with irritating frequency. 'Move' and 'Let's go.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy
“He wasn't smart enough to see it, said Jason Bourne. He couldn't think geometrically.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy
“Opportunities will present themselves. Recognize them, act on them.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy
“He may be a scholar, but he’s first a man who believes—with certain justification—that he was betrayed by his government.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy
“Alex, drunk or sober, made no distinction between the hours of day and night, nor did the operations he knew so well, for there was no night and day where his work was concerned. There was only the flat light of fluorescent tubes in offices that never closed.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy
“Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta...Delta is for Charlie and Charlie is for Cain”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy
“There was too little space for their own—and they guarded their own as all Chinese had done from the earliest dynasties.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy
“For so many, death is a liberation from intolerable human conditions.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy
“S-o pornesc din nou pe drumurile de-aici,împovărat de propriu-mi viciu,de viciul acesta care şi-a înfipt în mine rădăcinile dureroase încă de la vârsta când am început să judec,şi care urcă spre cer,mă loveşte,mă răstoarnă,mă târăşte după el.
Ultima inocenţă şi ultima sfială.A fost rostită.A nu-i oferii lumii lehamitea şi trăirile mele.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell
“That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores--when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters--when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we can glimpse the spectacle of the corner and manage nothing beyond loathing and contempt, then we've arrived at last at that naked place where a man finally sees the sense in stretching razor wire and building barracks and directing cattle cars into the compound.
It's a reckoning of another kind, perhaps, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies a well-planned and well-tended life. We know ourselves, we believe in ourselves; from what we value most, we grant ourselves the illusion that it's not chance in circumstance, that opportunity itself isn't the defining issue. We want the high ground; we want our own worth to be acknowledged. Morality, intelligence, values--we want those things measured and counted. We want it to be about Us.
Yes, if we were down there, if we were the damned of the American cities, we would not fail. We would rise above the corner. And when we tell ourselves such things, we unthinkably assume that we would be consigned to places like Fayette Street fully equipped, with all the graces and disciplines, talents and training that we now posses. Our parents would still be our parents, our teachers still our teachers, our broker still our broker. Amid the stench of so much defeat and despair, we would kick fate in the teeth and claim our deserved victory. We would escape to live the life we were supposed to live, the life we are living now. We would be saved, and as it always is in matters of salvation, we know this as a matter of perfect, pristine faith.
Why? The truth is plain:
We were not born to be niggers.”
― David Simon, quote from The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood
“I rested my forehead on a grease spot I'd left on the window earlier. The airlines, I thought, must have custodians who clean the windows, or there'd be an inches-thick layer of goo on them from people like me.
That thought was proof positive that I shouldn't be allowed to stay up for more than eighteen hours at a time. I have a bad habit of following every thought to its miserable, pathetic little end when I'm tired. I don't mean to. It's just that my brain and my tongue get unhinged. Though some of my less charitable acquaintances would say this condition didn't require sleep deprivation.”
― C.E. Murphy, quote from Urban Shaman
“I believe in magic. In evil sorceresses who deep down are really beautiful princesses. I believe in immortals who live in a different world than this one, accessible by magical stone wheels.”
― Morgan Rhodes, quote from Crystal Storm
“Joy begins with thankfulness. Quite often our attitudes hang in the balance; by making a conscious choice, we can tip our souls into dark moods of complaining, or into thankfulness and praise. It is amazing how much your mouth controls your soul. You”
― Debi Pearl, quote from Created to be His Help Meet
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.