“Half the world's work's done by hopeless neurotics.”
― Pat Barker, quote from The Eye in the Door
“(In response to 'In the end moral and political truths have to proved on the body.[ ie put one's body on the line to prove a truth]
That's a very dangerous idea. It comes quite close to saying that the willingness to suffer proves the rightness of belief. But is doesn't. The most it can ever prove is the believer's sincerity. And not always that. some people just like suffering.”
― Pat Barker, quote from The Eye in the Door
“The past is a palimpsest. Early memories are always obscured by accumulations of later knowledge.”
― Pat Barker, quote from The Eye in the Door
“One began by finding mental illness mystifying, and ended by being still more mystified by health.”
― Pat Barker, quote from The Eye in the Door
“Half the world's work is done by hopeless neurotics”
― Pat Barker, quote from The Eye in the Door
“Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.”
― Epictetus, quote from The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness
“--'There is no completeness; nothing endures, nothing lives; there is only change, unreasoning unreasonable; only birth and death repeating the same story each time, yet different; why?' The voice laughed--'Why you know already; look in your hands.”
― Vikram Chandra, quote from Red Earth and Pouring Rain
“Each thing in the world is translucent.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from Holy the Firm
“The worst experience can bring out a person's deepest strength.”
― Susan Campbell Bartoletti, quote from The Boy Who Dared
“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
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.