Quotes from The Luminaries

“Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“A woman fallen has no future; a man risen has no past.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“Never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person's point of view.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“For although a man is judged by his actions, by what he has said and done, a man judges himself by what he is willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have done—a judgment that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope and limits of his imagination, but by the ever-changing measure of his doubt and self-esteem.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“Reason is no match for desire: when desire is purely and powerfully felt, it becomes a kind of reason of its own.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“If home can't be where you come from, then home is what you make of where you go.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“It is a feature of human nature to give what we most wish to receive.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“We spend our entire lives thinking about death. Without that project to divert us, I expect we would all be dreadfully bored. We would have nothing to evade, and nothing to forestall, and nothing to wonder about. Time would have no consequence.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“Dawn is such a private hour, don’t you think? Such a solitary hour. One always hears that said of midnight, but I think of midnight as remarkably companionable—everyone together, sleeping in the dark.” “I am afraid I am interrupting your solitude,” Anna said. “No, no,” the boy said. “Oh, no. Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company.” He grinned at her, quickly, and Anna smiled back. “Especially the company of one other soul,” he added, turning back to the sea.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“I have heard that in the New Zealand native tradition, the soul, when it dies, becomes a star.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“His temperament was deeply nostalgic, not for for his own past, but for past ages; he was cynical of the present, fearful of the future and profoundly regretful of the world's decay.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“The proper way to understand any social system was to view it from above.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“Money is a burden, a burden most keenly felt by the poor.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“Luck only happens once and it's always an accident when it does.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“All men want their whores to be unhappy.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“Her carriage bespoke an exquisite misery, a wretchedness so perfect and so absolute that it manifested as dignity, as calm. More than a dark horse, she was darkness itself, the cloak of it.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“He liked lonely places, because he never really felt alone.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“Suffering, he thought later, could rob a man of his empathy, could turn him selfish, could make him depreciate all other sufferers.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“In my experience people are rarely contented to end up where they started.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“Moody had no small genius for the art of diplomacy. As a child he had known instinctively that it was always better to tell a partial truth with a willing aspect than to tell a perfect truth in a defensive way. The appearance of cooperation was worth a great deal, if only because it forced a reciprocity, fair met with fair.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“A man ought never to trust another man’s evaluation of a third man’s disposition.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“he built his persona as a shield around his person, because he knew very well how little his person could withstand.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“How silently the world revolved, when one was brooding, and alone.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“That’s a private interest of mine – what brings a fellow down here, you know, to the ends of the earth – what sparks a man?”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“It must have been unpleasant to be discussed as a curiosity, spoken about over breakfast, and between rounds at billiards, as if one's soul were a common property.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“He was not surly by temperment, and in fact did not find it difficult to form friendships, nor to allow those friendships to deepen, once they had been formed; he simply preferred to answer to himself. He disliked all burdens of responsibility, most especially when those responsibilities were expected, or enforced--and friendship nearly always devolved into matters of debt, guilt, and expectation.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“He wondered what assumptions she was forming, what picture was emerging from this scant constellation of his life.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“One could know a thousand women, Gascoigne thought; one could take a different girl every night for years and years—but sooner or later, the new lovers would do little more than call to mind the old, and one would be forced to wander, lost, in that reflective maze of endless comparison, forever disappointed, forever turning back.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

“True feeling is always circular - either circular, or paradoxical - simply because its cause and its expression are tow halves of the very same thing! Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love. Any man who disagrees with me has never been in love - not truly.”
― Eleanor Catton, quote from The Luminaries

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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.