Quotes from The Eye in the Door

“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

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Popular quotes

“We were moderate, we will never know what it is to spill out our lives...”
― James Salter, quote from Light Years

“Pain has a purpose. It makes us stronger. More compassionate. Able to love more deeply than we thought possible. If we let it, it makes us better people”
― D. Nichole King, quote from Love Always, Kate

“I couldn't tell if this was Tracy's attempt at dark humor, or if the world truly did hold more horrors that I hadn't considered. I needed to think about that one later, I decided, and shelved it in some inner recess of my brain.”
― Koethi Zan, quote from The Never List

“Paris became a star among the stars”
― Nicolas Barreau, quote from One Evening in Paris

“And that discovery would betray the closely guarded secret of modern culture to the laughter of the world. For we moderns have nothing of our own. We only become worth notice by filling ourselves to overflowing with foreign customs, arts, philosophies, religions and sciences: we are wandering encyclopaedias, as an ancient Greek who had strayed into our time would probably call us. But the only value of an encyclopaedia lies in the inside, in the contents, not in what is written outside, in the binding or the wrapper. And so the whole of modern culture is essentially internal; the bookbinder prints something like this on the cover: “Manual of internal culture for external barbarians.” The opposition of inner and outer makes the outer side still more barbarous, as it would naturally be, when the outward growth of a rude people merely developed its primitive inner needs. For what means has nature of repressing too great a luxuriance from without? Only one,—to be affected by it as little as possible, to set it aside and stamp it out at the first opportunity. And so we have the custom of no longer taking real things seriously, we get the feeble personality on which the real and the permanent make so little impression. Men become at last more careless and accommodating in external matters, and the [Pg 34] considerable cleft between substance and form is widened; until they have no longer any feeling for barbarism, if only their memories be kept continually titillated, and there flow a constant stream of new things to be known, that can be neatly packed up in the cupboards of their memory.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Use and Abuse of History for Life

Interesting books

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.