Quotes from The Covenant

James A. Michener ·  1240 pages

Rating: (17.3K votes)


“This is not a promise, this is not threat, it's just the way it's gonna be!!!”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant


“a word once written will often accidentally find a life that no one anticipates; it lies”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant


“Women like her looked at their world, rolled up their sleeves, and tried to make it better. Now”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant


“Detritus, that's the word. The awful accumulation of wrong decisions, improper terms. You scrape away the excrescences of history...and maybe you get down to the bedrock of human society, where diamonds hide. God of my fathers, how I wish we could bring in the psychological drills and probe down to bedrock.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant


“Never ask such a question!” Rhodes exploded. “Anything can be done if men of good principle determine that it shall be done. Have you the courage to strike for immortal goals?” In”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant



“they believed that the bright, soaring promises of the New Testament could be used as a basis for government; and”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant


“a nation is totally geared to the waging of war, it had better ensure that war keeps occurring somewhere; and”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant


“Wrong decisions, Jakob, are never inevitable. A wise man can always turn back from a precipice.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant


“The sanest judgment that can be passed on the genesis of this terrible war between two groups of friends is that it was the result of imperiousness on the English side and intransigence on the Boer. Like”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant


“then it occurred to him that a worthy man dedicates himself not to one particular thing which attracts him, but to all tasks; and he”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant



“Most important fact of war? Keep your army in existence. Lose the battle, but keep your eye on winning the war.” But”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant


“What the Voortrekkers failed to realize in their moment of victory was that they had offered the covenant to God, not He to them.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant


“Nevertheless, in obedience to the covenant as they understood it, they had won a signal victory, which confirmed their belief that He had accepted their offer and had personally intervened on their behalf. No”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant


“The Boer nation had become a theocracy, and would so remain. General”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant


“The English could bring into this tight area four hundred and forty-eight thousand soldiers, but they could not find space in their ships for the extra medicines and food needed to save emaciated women and children. They could import a hundred thousand horses for their cavalry, but not three cows for their concentration camps. Guns bigger than houses they could haul in, but no hospital equipment. It was insane; it was horrifying...”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Covenant



About the author

James A. Michener
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
Born date February 3, 1907
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“And the wicked thing is, that when we're really upset, we always take it out on the people who are closest and whom we love the most.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from Winter Solstice


“make decisions based on hope, not fear.”
― Sophie Hannah, quote from The Other Half Lives


“The big question of our time is not Can it be built? but Should it be built? This places us in an unusual historical moment: our future prosperity depends on the quality of our collective imaginations.”
― Eric Ries, quote from The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses


“Americans tend to play different roles, hoping that somehow they’ll stumble on the right one.”
― Gore Vidal, quote from The City and the Pillar


“The truth is that everything starts from the top. What determines your failure or success is your style of leadership and the chain of command that you design.”
― Robert Greene, quote from The 33 Strategies of War


Interesting books

War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
(4.4K)
War Is a Force That...
by Chris Hedges
Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution
(5.9K)
Origins: Fourteen Bi...
by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition
(70.9K)
Leaves of Grass: The...
by Walt Whitman
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Other Stories
(26.3K)
Alice's Adventures i...
by Lewis Carroll
A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary
(6.7K)
Tournament of Losers
(2.5K)
Tournament of Losers
by Megan Derr

About BookQuoters

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.