“To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Accept that there are things in this world we can never explain and life will be understandable. That is the irony of life. It is also the beauty of it.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“As with all the principles of aikijutsu, you do not meet the force of the strike head-on. You parry, you step to the side to avoid the blow, your redirect the force and unbalance your opponent. It is the same with the ken, the sword. These principles apply to you daily life as well. Never meet a person’s anger directly. Deflect, distract him, even agree with him. Unbalance his mind, and you can lead him anywhere you want.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“The world goes by, the young and the hopeful, all head for their future. Where does that leave us? There is a misconception that we have reached our destinations the moment we grow old, but it is not a well-accepted fact that we are still travelling towards those destinations, still beyond our reach even on the day we close our eyes for the final time.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“I had loaded another weight onto his suffering and it hurt me to understand that while one person can never really share the pain of another, they can so easily and so heedlessly add to it.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart’s memory but love itself?”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Time seems to overlap, like the shadows of leave pressing down on other leave, layer upon layer.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart's memory but love itself?”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Duty is a concept created by emperors and generals to deceive us into performing their will. Be wary when duty speaks, for it often masks the voice of others.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Was this part of the process of growing up, that we finally noticed the people closest to us in a different, clearer light?”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“One question remained to me. “If a higher level of bujutsu involves fighting with the mind, what then is the very highest level?” He closed his eyes for a while, seeing things he would never show me. “That,” he said, “would be never to fight at all.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Enlightenment, it is a moment of complete clarity, of pure bliss. At that instant everything will be revealed to you.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Yes, I could say that I had lived my life, if not to the full then at least almost to the brim. What more could one ask? Rare is the person whose life overflows.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“while one person can never really share the pain of another, they can so easily and so heedlessly add to it.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“In return for surrendering to the throw, you are given the gift of flight,’ he said.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Never meet a person’s anger directly. Deflect, distract him, even agree with him. Unbalance his mind, and you can lead him anywhere you want.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“I am certain it has never been easy, growing up as a child of mixed parentage in this place. But that is your strength. Accept the fact that you are different, that you are of two worlds. And I wish you to remember this when you feel you cannot go on: you are used to the duality of life. You have the ability to bring all of life's disparate elements into a cohesive whole. So use it”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“none of my children—not one—ever took the easy road; that they strove to keep sanity, reason, and compassion alive and burning in these tragic times.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“The young have hopes and dreams, while the old hold the remains of them in their hands and wonder what has happened to their lives.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“I can only teach you the way, that is all. What you do with it and what it does to you, those are beyond my influence.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“He stopped, pausing to arrange his words like an ikebana expert with his flowers, shifting, bending, adding, and taking away to achieve the results he desired.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“What made it worse was that we could never truly share such burdens with even those closest to us. In the end, the mistakes were our own, the consequences to be borne by us alone.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Then you understand that certain things cannot be stopped, that they must be allowed to proceed, regardless of the consequences?”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“When you are lost, in this world or on the continent of time itself, remember who you have been and you will know who you are. These people were all you, and you are them. I was you before you were born and you will be me after I am gone. That is the meaning of family.” He”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Teacher, as he was called, looked tiny, childlike, and deceptively vulnerable.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“In an instant I saw that I had unconsciously replicated Musashi’s drawing, the drawing that had been copied by Endo-san and for the briefest moment I saw how everything and everyone and every time was connected in some manner.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“The world goes by, the young and the hopeful, all head for their future. Where does that leave us? There is the misconception that we have reached our destinations the moment we grow old, but it is not a well-accepted fact that we are still traveling toward those destinations, still beyond our reach even on the day we close our eyes for the final time.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Spirit expanded, mind unfurling open, heart in flight.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“And the poem, I think, is only your voice speaking.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from The Waves
“For almost a generation, psychologists around the world have been engaged in a spirited debate over a question that most of us would consider to have been settled years ago. The question is this: is there such a thing as innate talent? The obvious answer is yes. Not every hockey player born in January ends up playing at the professional level. Only some do – the innately talented ones. Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger role preparation seems to play.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, quote from Outliers: The Story of Success
“No, of course not. But surely you know your affair couldn't go on forever."
"Forever has no meaning when you're living in the moment and I wasn't ready for that moment to end.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse
“For a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such shadows of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature - shades, certainly not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my identity - but slow degrees I became a frequenter of this straight narrow path.”
― Charlotte Brontë, quote from Villette
“Marvelously clear-fretted in the unsmoked air, the Abbey rose, silver-grey. It stood detached by the serenity of age from the ephemeral growths around it. It was solid on a foundation of centuries, destined, perhaps, for centuries yet to preserve within it the monuments to those whose work was now all destroyed. I did not loiter there. In years to come I expect some will go o look at the old Abbey with romantic melancholy. But romance of that kind is an alloy of tragedy with retrospect. I was too close.”
― John Wyndham, quote from The Day of the Triffids
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.