“If we both believe that we have nothing to learn from the other, is it not obvious that we will both be wrong?”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“Long ago it had been discovered that without some crime or disorder, Utopia soon became unbearably dull.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“And there still remained, for all men to share, the linked worlds of Love and Art. Linked, because love without art is merely the slaking of desire, and Art cannot be enjoyed unless it is approached with Love.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart, and only its absence can produce any emotional effect.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“The rise of science, which with monotonous regularity refuted the cosmologies of the prophets and produced miracles which they could never match, eventually destroyed all these faiths. It did not destroy the awe, nor the reverence and humility, which all intelligent beings felt as they contemplated the stupendous universe in which they found themselves. What it did weaken, and finally obliterate, were the countless religions each of which claimed with unbelievable arrogance, that it was the sole repository of the truth and that its millions of rivals and predecessors were all mistaken.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“Men had sought beauty in many forms—in sequences of sound, in lines upon paper, in surfaces of stone, in the movements of the human body, in colours ranged through space.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“Faith in one’s own destiny was among the most valuable of the gifts which the gods could bestow upon a man,”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“He did not wander aimlessly, though he never knew which village would be his next port of call. He was seeking no particular place, but a mood, an influence—indeed, a way of life.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“However much the universe and its mysteries might call him, this was where he was born and where he belonged. It would never satisfy him, yet always he would return. He had gone half-way across the Galaxy to learn this simple truth.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“Men had sought beauty in many forms—in sequences of sound, in lines upon paper, in surfaces of stone, in the movements of the human body, in colours ranged through space. All these media still survived in Diaspar and down the ages others had been added to them. No one was yet certain if all the possibilities of art had been discovered, or if it had any meaning outside the mind of Man. And the same was true of love.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“Alvin was an explorer, and all explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“They had forgotten much, but they did not know it. They were as perfectly fitted to their environment as it was to them—for both had been designed together. What was beyond the walls of the city was no concern of theirs; it was something that had been shut out of their minds. Diaspar was all that existed, all that they needed, all that they could imagine. It mattered nothing to them that Man had once possessed the stars.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“In Lys, it seemed, all love began with mental contact, and it might be months or years before a couple actually met. In this way, Hilvar explained, there could be no false impressions, no deceptions, on either side. Two people whose minds were open to one another could hide no secrets.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart,”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“No single individual, however eccentric or brilliant, could affect the enormous inertia of a society that had remained virtually unchanged for over a billion years.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“Like every human being, Alvin was in some measure a machine, his actions predetermined by his inheritance. That did not alter his need for understanding and sympathy, nor did it render him immune to loneliness or frustration. To his own people, he was so unaccountable a creature that they sometimes forgot that he still shared their emotions.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“It was idle to speculate, to build pyramids of surmise on a foundation of ignorance.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“Otsusta minu üle mu tegude järgi, ehkki neid on vähe, mitte mu sõnade järgi, kuigi neid on palju.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“Behind Alystra was the known world, full of wonder yet empty of surprise, drifting like a brilliant but tightly closed bubble down the river of time. Ahead, separated from her by no more than the span of a few footsteps, was the empty wilderness—the world of the desert—the world of the Invaders.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“Long ago the signalling had become no more than a meaningless ritual, now maintained by an animal which had forgotten to learn and a robot which had never known to forget.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“Oh, I can think of many reasons. Perhaps it’s a signal, so that any strange ship entering our universe will know where to look for life. Perhaps it marks the centre of galactic administration. Or perhaps—and somehow I feel that this is the real explanation—it’s simply the greatest of all works of art. But it’s foolish to speculate now. In a few hours we shall know the truth.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“That suggested two possibilities. It was either too unintelligent to understand him—or it was very intelligent indeed, with its own powers of choice and volition. In that case, he must treat it as an equal. Even then he might underestimate it—but it would bear him no resentment, for conceit was not a vice from which robots often suffered.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“On the placidly flowing river of time, he wished only to make a few ripples: he shrank from diverting its course.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“The history of the Universe must be a mass of such disconnected threads, and no one could say which were important and which were trivial.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“Linked, because love without art is merely the slaking of desire, and Art cannot be enjoyed unless it is approached with Love. Men”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“You are rather too fond of talking in riddles,’ complained Jeserac.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“he suffered from an incurable malady which, it seemed, attacked only homo sapiens among all the intelligent races of the universe. That disease was religious mania. Throughout”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“And as for the Council—tell it that a road that has once been opened cannot be closed again merely by passing a resolution.’ The”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“A thousand years in one body is long enough for any man; at the end of that time, his mind is clogged with memories, and he asks only for rest—or a new beginning.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
“Evolution and science had come to the same answers; and the work of Nature had lasted longer. At”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars
Arthur C. Clarke
Born place: in Minehead, Somerset, England, The United Kingdom
Born date December 16, 1917
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“He suggested that Joe think of a well-rowed race as a symphony, and himself as just one player in the orchestra. If one fellow in an orchestra was playing out of tune, or playing at a different tempo, the whole piece would naturally be ruined. That’s the way it was with rowing. What mattered more than how hard a man rowed was how well everything he did in the boat harmonized with what the other fellows were doing.”
― Daniel James Brown, quote from The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
“He pulled out a book here and there, but what kept catching his attention were the diagonal tunnels of sunlight rolling in through the dormer windows. All around him dust motes rose and fell, shimmering, quivering in those shafts of roiling light. He found several shelves full of old editions of classical writers and began vaguely browsing, hoping to find a cheap edition of Virgil's Aeneid, which he had only ever read in a borrowed copy. It wasn't really the great poem of antiquity that Dorrigo Evans wanted though, but the aura he felt around such books--an aura that both radiated outwards and took him inwards to another world that said to him that he was not alone.
And this sense, this feeling of communion, would at moments overwhelm him. At such times he had the sensation that there was only one book in the universe, and that all books were simply portals into this greater ongoing work--an inexhaustible, beautiful world that was not imaginary but the world as it truly was, a book without beginning or end.”
― Richard Flanagan, quote from The Narrow Road to the Deep North
“She could read the patterns, knew at a glance a Melas from a Konya, a Ladik from a Sivas. She loved the Ladik.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“My feet are completely flat, but for most of my life they were still shaped like feet. Now, thanks to bunions, they're shaped more like states, wide boring ones that nobody wants to drive through.”
― David Sedaris, quote from When You Are Engulfed in Flames
“The [Five Second Rule] has many variations, including The Three Second Rule, The Seven Second Rule, and the extremely handy and versatile The However Long It Takes Me to Pick Up This Food Rule.”
― Neil Pasricha, quote from The Book of Awesome
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DancerBookQuoters 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.
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