“And I came to understand, in a way I never had before, that books are truly the stuff of miracles. I even dared to dream that someday, somehow, I might surround myself with books from many times and many tongues...”
― T.A. Barron, quote from The Lost Years
“As the wind swelled, my tree started to sway. Almost like a human body it swung back and around, gently at first, then more and more wildly. While the swaying intensified, so did my fears that the trunk might snap and hurl me to the ground. But in time my confidence returned. Amazed at how the tree could be at once so flexible and so sturdy, I held on tight as it bent and waved, twisted and swirled, slicing curves and arcs through the air. With each graceful swing, I felt less a creature of the land and more a part of the wind itself.
"The rain began falling, it's sound merging with the splashing river and the singing trees. Branches streamed like waterfalls of green. Tiny rivers cascaded down every trunk, twisting through moss meadows and bark canyons. All the while, I rode out the gale. I could not have felt wetter. I could not have felt freer.
"When, at last, the storm subsided, the entire world seemed newly born. Sunbeams danced on rain-washed leaves. Curling columns of mist rose from every glade. The forest's colors shown more vivid, its smells struck more fresh. And I understood, for the first time in my life, that the Earth was always being remade, that life was always being renewed. That it may have been the afternoon of this particular day, but it was still the very morning of Creation.”
― T.A. Barron, quote from The Lost Years
“My constellations are not made from the stars, but from the spaces between the stars. The dark places. The open places, where your mind can travel forever and ever.”
― T.A. Barron, quote from The Lost Years
“Comme si une douce brise s’était levée, les cheveux de Shim ont commencé à remuer. Son nez s’est mis à grossir. Puis ses oreilles. Puis le reste de sa tête, son cou, ses épaules… Ses bras ont gonflé, ainsi que sa poitrine, ses hanches, ses jambes et ses pieds. Ses vêtements s’élargissaient, grandissaient en même temps que lui, à toute vitesse… Et le miracle est arrivé : Shim a ouvert les yeux ! Plus émerveillé que nous tous, il se tâtait partout avec ses mains de plus en plus grandes. — Je grandis ! Je grandis ! s’est-il exclamé.”
― T.A. Barron, quote from The Lost Years
“In chess, as in life, your choice will make all the difference.”
― T.A. Barron, quote from The Lost Years
T.A. Barron
Born place: in Harvard, Massachusetts, The United States
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“We no longer have political movement. While thousands of us may come together for a rally or march, we are bound together on such occasions by a single shared interest. Any effort to convert such interests into collective goals is usually undermined by the fragmented individualism of our concerns. Laudable goals - fighting climate change, opposing war, advocating public healthcare or penalizing bankers - are united by nothing more than the expression of emotion. In our political as in our economic lives, we have become consumers: choosing from a broad gamut of competing objectives, we find it hard to imagine ways or reasons to combine these into a coherent whole. We must do better than this.”
― Tony Judt, quote from Ill Fares the Land
“Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.”
― John Piper, quote from God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself
“If there is one thing will kill Turkey,’ she would say, ‘it is a famine of ideas.’
No one in her coterie dared mention that if anything was killing Turkey it was a surfeit of ideas, too many political visions and ideologies. But the head of the school of economics did mention a particularly bright and aggressive undergraduate who was fighting a ridiculous but valorous battle against an American academic of ten times his experience and a hundred times his reputation. Three days later the invitation arrived on Georgios Ferentinou’s desk. Not even his unworldliness could ignore a summons from Meryem Nasi. So he found himself stiff as a wire in a hired suit and cheap shoes clutching a glass on her Yeniköy terrace, grimacing nervously at anyone who moved through his personal space.”
― Ian McDonald, quote from The Dervish House
“Better foolish and honest than clever and false.”
― Paula Brackston, quote from The Witch's Daughter
“Law is for those who have forgotten the language of the heart and only know the language of the mind.”
― Osho, quote from Love, Freedom, and Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships
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IsmaelBookQuoters 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.
