“Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food;”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“Robin: When you do marry, who will you marry?
Maria: I have not quite decided yet, but I think I shall marry a boy I knew in London.
Robin(yells): What? Marry some mincing nincompoop of a Londoner with silk stockings and a pomade in his hair and face like a Cheshire cheese? You dare do such a thing! You - Maria - if you marry a London man I'll wring his neck! (...) I'll not only wring his neck, I'll wring everybody's necks, and I'll go right away out of the valley, over the hills to the town where my father came from, and I won't ever come back here again. So there!
(...)
Maria: Why don't you want me to marry that London boy?
Robin(shouting): Because you are going to marry me. Do you hear, Maria? You are going to marry me.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“There is always something particularly delightful about exceptions to a rule.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“Nothing is ever finished and done with in this world. You may think a seed was finished and done with when it falls like a dead thing into the earth; but when it puts forth leaves and flowers next spring you see your mistake.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“In my opinion, too much attention to weather makes for instability of character.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“...The simple little words came easily, fitting themselves to the tune that had come out of the harpsichord. It didn't seem to her that she made them up at all. It seemed to her that they flew in from the rose-garden, through the open window, like a lot of butterflies, poised themselves on the point of her pen, and fell off it on to the paper.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“I have known him nearly all my life, and I am going to marry him, so that there won't ever be a time when I shan't know him.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“Don't waste hate on pink geranium.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“Cleanliness', chuckled Sir Benjamin, noting his great niece's delighted smile as her eyes rested upon him, 'comes next to godliness, eh, Maria?”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“Give me the benefit of your assistance during those ablutions that neccessarily, though unfortunatly, invariably follow the excercise of the culinary art.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“She could only wait. But she was not idle while she waited, because she was holding herself in readiness for whatever it was that she would have to do. She was trying not to be frightened in her mind, and she found that that sort of waiting and thinking really keep a person quite busy.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“Are you quite sure that you want to hear it?" he asked. "Sometimes, Maria, a story that one hears starts one off doing things that one would not have had to do if one had not heard it.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“...pero no era sólo que rayara el alba, sino que el silencio también se había roto. A lejos, tenue y misterioso, se presentía el ruido del mar.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“Por el este, donde estaba el mar y por donde habría de salir el sol, la luz se acercaba con sigilo tratando de internarse en el bosque como una neblina, y a medida que aumentaba la claridad lo hacía también el ruido del mar. De pronto, la luz pareció tomar forma. Dentro de ella había sombras que se movían, constituidas por otra luz aún más brillante. Eran cientos de caballos blancos al galope, con largas y sueltas crines y elegantes cuellos curvados como los de los caballos de ajedrez que había en la sala de estar. Sus cuerpos, que avanzaban a la velocidad de la luz, estaban hechos de una materia más etérea que del arco iris-”
― Elizabeth Goudge, quote from The Little White Horse
“It's like a crime is an act that when you've committed one the act is over and you haven't changed inside. But when you commit a sin it's like you create a condition that you have to live in.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Rule of the Bone
“Besides, whoever keeps the future in front of him and the past at his back is doing something else that's hard to imagine. For the image implies that events somehow already exist in the future, reach the present at a determined moment, and finally come to rest in the past. But nothing exists in the future; it is empty; one might die at any minute. Therefore such a person has his face toward the void, whereas it is the past behind him that is visible, stored in the memory.”
― Harry Mulisch, quote from The Assault
“I suppose at some point, we all have to decide which memories - real or otherwise - to hold on to, and which ones to let go.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“I was born the son of a humble mechanic. A quantum mechanic.”
― Mark Oliver Everett, quote from Things The Grandchildren Should Know
“C.S. Lewis in his second letter to me at Oxford, asked how it was that I, as a product of a materialistic universe, was not at home there. 'Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Then, if we complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest? It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed by it--how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.”
― Sheldon Vanauken, quote from A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph
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.