“... sometimes good people [are] helpless... terrible things happen... to good people... there [are] sad endings as well as happy ones.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from The Fairy Godmother
“Once the blinders are off, it's rather hard to go back to seeing things the way you used to.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from The Fairy Godmother
“...for a country whose people ceased to believe in magic soon lost much of their ability to imagine and dream, and before long, they ceased to believe--or hope-- for anything.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from The Fairy Godmother
“Sometimes, it seemed, the business of a Witch or a Godmother was not so much using magic as knowing when not to use it.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from The Fairy Godmother
“And when it comes down to cases, everything written is at least in part a fantasy. Except maybe for the national budget. That’s horror.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from The Fairy Godmother
“Dying this way was a better way to die because living this way was a better way to live. The”
― Karl Marlantes, quote from Matterhorn
“That is the purpose of desire. It is for creation and destruction. It is the beginning and the end of a journey. Without desire, there is nothing.”
― Amish Tripathi, quote from The Secret of the Nagas
“I mean, it's not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It's, like, part of you for good.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from What Happened to Goodbye
“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, quote from Democracy in America
“The hours came to minutes, the minutes to seconds. And now each second was as
long as all the time before”
― Vernor Vinge, quote from A Fire Upon the Deep
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.