“...the heart of a child can take forty-nine blows before it’s damaged for ever and what’s done can never be undone.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“Hypocrites,’ replied Cale, ‘I’ve come across a lot of them recently. I mean by that I understand now how many of them there are.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“Self-pity, while it should be accorded due respect, is the greatest of all acids to the human soul.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“Do you have any idea how mad you sound?’
‘Indeed I do. I have in moments of doubt considered the question of my sanity.’ (...)
‘And?’
‘Then I consider what a piece of work is man. How defective in reason, how mean his facilities, how ugly in form and movement, in action how like a devil, in apprehension how like a cow. The beauty of the world? The paragon of animals? To me the quintessence of dust.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“We are all cynics now, I suppose, and even a mewling infant knows that to save a life is to make an eternal enemy.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“Even for the very clever it can be like breaking bones to stand back from something that’s been in front of you all your life.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“It's pointless to blame someone for being themselves and looking to their own interests.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“That’s why it’s much better not to have friends if you have the strength of character to do without them. In the end friends always turn into a nuisance of one kind or another. But if you must have them let them alone and accept that you must allow everyone the right to exist in accordance with the character he has, whatever it turns out to be.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“Whatever discoveries have been made in the land of self-delusion, many undiscovered regions remain to be explored.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“Bůh není nějaký kriminálník, který podvádí v kartách. Chce, abychom se jeho zákony řídili svobodně, z vlastní vůle. Ani Bůh nedokáže nakreslit kulatý čtverec. Bůh je osamělý - chce, aby si lidé poslušnost sami zvolili, a ne aby k ní byli přinuceni strachem.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“Lidské srdce je malé, touží ale po velkých věcech. Nestačí ani zasytit psa, ale celý svět pro něj není dost velký.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“...and what is a good weapon but a good idea made murderous flesh?”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“It is not against reason, said the Englishman, to prefer the destruction of the world to a scratch on your finger – how much easier to understand the same price for the gash in your soul.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“The search for knowledge and the discovery of a great weapon are virtually one and the same. War is the father of everything.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“Nikdy nepřerušuj nepřítele, když se dopouští omylu.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“Nemá smysl zlobit se na někoho za to, že je sám sebou a stará se o vlastní zájmy.”
― Paul Hoffman, quote from The Last Four Things
“There are a great many wicked people in the world," said Emelyan.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Complete Short Novels
“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
― Wayne W. Dyer, quote from The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-create Your World Your Way
“...y se corría a ochenta kilómetros por hora hacia las luces que crecían poco a poco, sin que ya se supiera bien por qué tanto apuro, por qué esa carrera en la noche entre autos desconocidos donde nadie sabía nada de los otros, donde todo el mundo miraba fijamente hacia adelante, exclusivamente hacia adelante.”
― Julio Cortázar, quote from Todos los fuegos el fuego
“How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Ecce Homo
“For as we would wish that a painter who is to draw a beautiful face, in which there is yet some imperfection, should neither wholly leave out, nor yet too pointedly express what is defective, because this would deform it, and that spoil the resemblance; so since it is hard, or indeed perhaps impossible, to show the life of a man wholly free from blemish, in all that is excellent we must follow truth exactly, and give it fully; any lapses or faults that occur, through human passions or political necessities, we may regard rather as the shortcomings of some particular virtue, than as the natural effects of vice; and may be content without introducing them, curiously and officiously, into our narrative, if it be but out of tenderness to the weakness of nature, which has never succeeded in producing any human character so perfect in virtue as to be pure from all admixture and open to no criticism.”
― Plutarch, quote from Parallel Lives
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.