“Small minds cannot grasp great ideas; to their narrow comprehension, their purblind vision, nothing seems really great and important but themselves.”
― James George Frazer, quote from The Golden Bough
“For extending its sway, partly by force of arms, partly by the voluntary submission of weaker tribes, the community soon acquires wealth and slaves, both of which, by relieving some classes from the perpetual struggle for a bare subsistence, afford them an opportunity of devoting themselves to that disinterested pursuit of knowledge which is the noblest and most powerful instrument to ameliorate the lot of man.”
― James George Frazer, quote from The Golden Bough
“For strength of character in the race as in the individual consists mainly in the power of sacrificing the present for the future, of disregarding the immediate temptations of ephemeral pleasure for more distant and lasting sources of satisfaction. The more the power is exercised the higher and stronger becomes the character; till the height of heroism is reached in men who renounce the pleasures of life and even life itself for the sake of winning for others, perhaps in distant ages, the blessings of freedom and truth.”
― James George Frazer, quote from The Golden Bough
“the fear of the human dead, which, on the whole, I believe to have been probably the most powerful force in the making of primitive religion.”
― James George Frazer, quote from The Golden Bough
“So in Scotland witches used to raise the wind by dipping a rag in water and beating it thrice on a stone, saying: “I knok this rag upone this stane To raise the wind in the divellis name, It sall not lye till I please againe.”
― James George Frazer, quote from The Golden Bough
“Thus religion, beginning as a slight and partial acknowledgment of powers superior to man, tends with the growth of knowledge to deepen into a confession of man’s entire and absolute dependence on the divine; his old free bearing is exchanged for an attitude of lowliest prostration before the mysterious powers of the unseen, and his highest virtue is to submit his will to theirs: In la sua volontade è nostra pace.”
― James George Frazer, quote from The Golden Bough
“legend ascribed to the Tauric Diana is familiar to classical readers;”
― James George Frazer, quote from The Golden Bough
“THE PRIMARY aim of this book is to explain the remarkable rule which regulated the succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia.”
― James George Frazer, quote from The Golden Bough
“fear of the human dead, which, on the whole, I believe to have been probably the most powerful force in the making of primitive religion.”
― James George Frazer, quote from The Golden Bough
James George Frazer
Born place: in Glasgow, The United Kingdom
Born date January 1, 1854
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“What in fact could two men talk about, beyond a certain age? What reason could two men find for being together, except, of course, in the case of a conflict of interests, or some common project? After a certain age, it's quite obvious that everything has been said and done. How could a project as intrinsically empty as two men spending some time together lead to anything other than boredom, annoyance, and, at the end of the day, outright hostility? While between a man and a woman there still remained, despite everything, something: a little bit of attraction, a little bit of hope, a little bit of a dream.”
― Michel Houellebecq, quote from The Possibility of an Island
“What is less often noticed is that it is precisely the kind of moral instruction that parents are constantly trying to give their children — concrete, imaginative, teaching general principles from particular instances, and seeking all the time to bring the children to appreciate and share the parent's own attitudes and view of life… The all-embracing principles of conduct”
― J.I. Packer, quote from Knowing God
“Cuando Martín declaró en el juicio que la única buena costumbre que él defendía era la de leer y que el resto era asunto de cada uno, el juez añadió otros diez años de condena a los no sé cuanto que ya le habían caído.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Prisoner of Heaven
“Lots of people do things lots better than lots of others; but, today, so many people do so many things very well, and so many people are seriously interested in so many different things people do for their own different reasons, you can’t call any thing the best for every person, or even every serious person. So you just pay real attention to the real things that affect you; and don’t waste your time knocking the rest.”
― Samuel R. Delany, quote from Dhalgren
“On that ledge in the blackness, she'd truly recognized for the first time in her life that some creatures who went bump in the night might hate that they did.”
― Kresley Cole, quote from Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night
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The Virgin SuicidesBookQuoters 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.
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