“The next time somebody announces that he plans to get Medieval on your ass, tell him you're going to get Renaissance on his gonads.”
― James K. Morrow, quote from The Last Witchfinder
“I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.”
― James K. Morrow, quote from The Last Witchfinder
“Books don't repeat the same words over and over. The Gulliver's Travels whose whimsey amused you at twelve is not the Gulliver's Travels whose acid engaged you at thirty.”
― James K. Morrow, quote from The Last Witchfinder
“...throughout history the community of readers has been prey to sinister forces - to pedants and priests, legislators and lunatics, deities and demagogues. You have paid for your passion in humiliation, mutilation, and sometimes even - as when Henry VIII burned Bible translator William Tyndale as a heretic - immolation. I salute you all, as do my fellow books.”
― James K. Morrow, quote from The Last Witchfinder
“...one day the world will notice that while E=mc2 ultimately gives you 177,000 dead Japanese civilians, F=ma lets you skate across a frozen lake on a winter's night, the wind caressing your face as you glide toward the hot-chocolate stand on the far shore.”
― James K. Morrow, quote from The Last Witchfinder
“The precise metaphysical procedures by which a book goes about writing another book need not concern us here. Suffice to say that our human scribes remain entirely ignorant of their possession by bibliographic forces; the agent in question never doubts that his authorship is authentic.”
― James K. Morrow, quote from The Last Witchfinder
“Face it, people, there is more to your malaise than celestial mechanics. If you want to know why you feel so bad, you must look beyond universal gravitation.”
― James K. Morrow, quote from The Last Witchfinder
“Let's admit it, people: nobody understands consciousness. Psychology hasn't had a Newton yet.”
― James K. Morrow, quote from The Last Witchfinder
“The Enlightenment may have indeed outlived its usefulness, but it is only through Reason's protocols that one can make a coherent case for Reason's limitations. O ye of little skepticism, kindly acknowledge your debt to that idiom on which you so glibly heap scorn.”
― James K. Morrow, quote from The Last Witchfinder
“All I ask, Madam, is to share with thee a common center of gravity.”
― James K. Morrow, quote from The Last Witchfinder
“Abide with me, fleshling, and I shall teach you to run with the fluxions.”
― James K. Morrow, quote from The Last Witchfinder
“You speak of Sorcery. It so happens that in the investigations leading first to my Conjectures concerning Light and later to my System of the World, I fell upon a pretty Proof that Wicked Spirits enjoy no essential Existence, being but Desires of the Mind.”
― James K. Morrow, quote from The Last Witchfinder
“Versatility is one of the few human traits which are universally intolerable. You may be good at Greek and good at painting and be popular. You may be good at Greek and good at sport, and be wildly popular. But try all three and you're a mountebank. Nothing arouses suspicion quicker than genuine, all-round proficiency.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Game of Kings
“His heart and mine added a rhythm all their own. We turned and turned, and with every turning we breathed a little more quickly and held on a little more tightly, and when we came back to the place we started, we stopped dancing and stood with our arms around each other, holding on as if we would never let go, not if the sky fell and the whole world came to an end.”
― Juliet Marillier, quote from Wildwood Dancing
“This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Quicksilver
“Truth is only what people want to believe and nothing more.”
― Leon Uris, quote from Mila 18
“The only thing that mattered was that the quarter century or so he had remaining would be his life, to live out as he chose and in his own best interests. Nothing took precedence over that: not work, not friendships, not relationships with women. Those were all components of his life, and valuable ones, but they did not define it or control it. That was up to him, and him alone.”
― Ken Grimwood, quote from Replay
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.