“You, you'll see no more the pain I suffered, all the pain I caused! Too long you looked on the ones you never should have seen, blind to the ones you longed to see, to know! Blind from this hour on! Blind in the darkness-blind!”
― Sophocles, quote from The Complete Plays
“ANTIGONE Yea, for these laws were not ordained of Zeus, And she who sits enthroned with gods below, Justice, enacted not these human laws. Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man, Could’st by a breath annul and override The immutable unwritten laws of Heaven. They were not born today nor yesterday; They die not; and none knoweth whence they sprang. I was not like, who feared no mortal’s frown, To disobey these laws and so provoke The wrath of Heaven. I knew that I must die, E’en hadst thou not proclaimed it; and if death Is thereby hastened, I shall count it gain. For death is gain to him whose life, like mine, Is full of misery. Thus my lot appears Not sad, but blissful; for had I endured To leave my mother’s son unburied there, I should have grieved with reason, but not now. And if in this thou judgest me a fool, Methinks the judge of folly’s not acquit.”
― Sophocles, quote from The Complete Plays
“And now that Reason’s light returns, New sorrow in his spirit burns.”
― Sophocles, quote from The Complete Plays
“Therefore, while our eyes wait to see the destined final day, we must call no one happy who is of mortal race, until he has crossed life's border, free from pain.”
― Sophocles, quote from The Complete Plays
“O građani otadžbine Tebe, evo Edipa,
znalca čudesne zagonetke i prvog čoveka,
čiju sreću niko nije gledao bez zavisti!
Gledajte u kakav ponor sudbe grozne pade on!
Zato nikog, dan dok onaj poslednji ne dočeka,
neću proslavljati kao srećna, pre no doplovi
kraju veka svog a nikakav ne pogodi ga jad.”
― Sophocles, quote from The Complete Plays
“It was the only way he knew to protect the court, the faery, and the only mortal who'd ever mattered to him.”
― Melissa Marr, quote from Ink Exchange
“perhaps because this time not fear but love made him read.”
― Cornelia Funke, quote from Inkdeath
“She looked down a slope, needing to squint for the sunlight, onto a vast sprawl of houses which had grown up all together, like a well-tended crop, from the dull brown earth; and she thought of the time she’d opened a transistor radio to replace a battery and seen her first printed circuit. The ordered swirl of houses and streets, from this high angle, sprang at her now with the same unexpected, astonishing clarity as the circuit card had. Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning, of an intent to communicate. There’d seemed no limit to what the printed circuit could have told her (if she had tried to find out); so in her first minute of San Narciso, a revelation also trembled just past the threshold of her understanding.”
― Thomas Pynchon, quote from The Crying of Lot 49
“As long as the heart beats, as long as body and soul keep together, I cannot admit that any creature endowed with a will has need to despair of life.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Journey to the Center of the Earth
“The first rule of her
confrontational life-style was Always get the last word. The second
was Always make the first move. Making this first move was what she
thought of as Taking Care of Things, and she meant to take care of
Nettle in a hurry.”
― Stephen King, quote from Needful Things
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.