“...Orm always afterwards used to say that, after good luck, strength, and skill at arms, nothing was so useful to a man who found himself among foreigners as the ability to learn a language.”
― Frans G. Bengtsson, quote from The Long Ships
“A wise man, once he is past fifty, does not befuddle his senses with strong drink, nor make violent love in the cool spring night, nor dance on his hands.”
― Frans G. Bengtsson, quote from The Long Ships
“Mulled ale for the frozen man,
And mulled ale for the weary:
For mulled ale is the body's friend
And makes the sick heart merry.”
― Frans G. Bengtsson, quote from The Long Ships
“I heard word
Of bellied sailcloth,
Creak of oars,
And gold in Eastland.
Then I smelled
A smell remembered:
Salt of spray
And black-pitched boat's keel.”
― Frans G. Bengtsson, quote from The Long Ships
“for there is no cure for love save love itself. That is the verdict of all the wise doctors who have ever practiced since the earliest times.”
― Frans G. Bengtsson, quote from The Long Ships
“Man is always so,” said Father Willibald, “be he heathen or baptized; content with his lot only as long as he meets no neighbor who possesses more.”
― Frans G. Bengtsson, quote from The Long Ships
“His bed needed all the good craftsmanship that had gone into its making to keep it from splitting asunder as he would grip one of its beams to heave at the oar of his sleep; and he often said that there was no happiness in the world to compare with that of awakening from such a dream and finding it to be only a dream. Three”
― Frans G. Bengtsson, quote from The Long Ships
“A classic paper by John Gourville, a professor of marketing at Harvard Business School, stipulates that “many innovations fail because consumers irrationally overvalue the old while companies irrationally overvalue the new.”10”
― Nir Eyal, quote from Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
“When we were leaving London, Dad spent about an hour trying to push his wardrobe through the bedroom door. He turned it on its side. He tried it upside down. He tilted it one way and then the other but it just would not fit. Words like "Mum" and "Affair" and "Dad" and "Drinking" were just like that wardrobe--too big to get out. No matter what I did, I couldn't fit them through the space between my teeth.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, quote from Trái tim của Bụt
“I set the coffee aside and got a cup of water instead. I could never see why people drank that stuff. It tasted like soil boiled in mud, wit a topping of dirt.”
― Brandon Sanderson, quote from Calamity
“He bit his lip, struggling to make words out of the war waging itself in his chest.
"I don't know what this makes me," he managed at last.
Hook laughed, not unkindly. "It makes you whatever you want it to make you.”
― Austin Chant, quote from Peter Darling
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.