“Now piercèd is her virgin zone;
She feels the foe within it.
She hears a broken amorous groan,
The panting lover's fainting moan,
Just in the happy minute.”
― John Wilmot, quote from The Complete Poems
“Bawdy in thoughts, precise in words,
Ill-natured though a whore,
Her belly is a bag of turds,
And her cunt a common shore.”
― John Wilmot, quote from The Complete Poems
“Then, if to make your ruin more,
You'll peevishly be coy,
Die with the scandal of a whore
And never know the joy.”
― John Wilmot, quote from The Complete Poems
“This signior is sound, safe, ready, and dumb
As ever was candle, carrot, or thumb;
Then away with these nasty devices, and show
How you rate the just merits of Signior Dildo.”
― John Wilmot, quote from The Complete Poems
“God bless our good and gracious King,
Whose promise none relies on;
Who never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever did a wise one.”
― John Wilmot, quote from The Complete Poems
“Man differs more from man than man from beast”
― John Wilmot, quote from The Complete Poems
“A kind of losing loadum is their game,
Where the worst writer has the greatest fame.”
― John Wilmot, quote from The Complete Poems
“All monarchs I hate, and the thrones they sit on,
From the hector of France to the cully of Britain.”
― John Wilmot, quote from The Complete Poems
“Nothing suits worse with vice than want of sense”
― John Wilmot, quote from The Complete Poems
“How blest was the created state
Of man and woman, ere they fell,
Compared to our unhappy fate:
We need not fear another hell.”
― John Wilmot, quote from The Complete Poems
“Merely for safety, after fame we thirst,
For all men would be cowards if they durst.”
― John Wilmot, quote from The Complete Poems
“As I trailed dumbly up the next flight it seemed strange that we had never said goodbye. We didn’t know when, if ever, we would see each other again yet neither of us had said a word. I don’t know if Siegfried wanted to say anything but there was a lot try trying to burst from me.
I wanted to thank him for being a friend as well as a boss, for teaching me so much, for never letting me down. There were other things, too, but I never said them.
Come to think of it, I’ve never even thanked him for that fifty pounds…until now.”
― James Herriot, quote from All Things Bright and Beautiful
“Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea.
When the camel driver sees, at the horizon of the tableland, the pinnacles of the skyscrapers come into view, the radar antennae, the white and red wind-socks flapping, the chimneys belching smoke, he thinks of a ship; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away from the desert, a windjammer about to cast off, with the breeze already swelling the sails, not yet unfurled, or a steamboat with its boiler vibrating in the iron keel; and he thinks of all the ports, the foreign merchandise the cranes unload on the docks, the taverns where crews of different flags break bottles over one another’s heads, the lighted, ground-floor windows, each with a woman combing her hair.
In the coastline’s haze, the sailor discerns the form of a camel’s withers, an embroidered saddle with glittering fringe between two spotted humps, advancing and swaying; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wine-skins and bags of candied fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself at the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees’ jagged shade, toward palaces of thick, whitewashed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half-hidden by their veils, and half-revealed.
Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes; and so the camel driver and the sailor see Despina, a border city between two deserts.”
― Italo Calvino, quote from Invisible Cities
“He wants to be grown-up. How different dreams can be! Nature will soon grant your wish.”
― Cornelia Funke, quote from The Thief Lord
“There are only two industries. This has always been true....There is the industry of things, and the industry of entertainment....After people have the things they need to live, everything else is entertainment. Everything.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
“I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair
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.