“Since thou wilt not remain here, chieftain, thou shalt receive the boon whatsoever thy tongue may name, as far as the wind dries, and the rain moistens, and the sun revolves, and the sea encircles, and the earth extends; save only my ship; and my mantle; and Caledvwlch, my sword; and Rhongomyant, my lance; and Wynebgwrthucher, my shield; and Carnwenhau, my dagger; and Gwenhwyvar, my wife”
― quote from The Mabinogion
“So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptized her, and gave her the name of Blodeuwedd.”
― quote from The Mabinogion
“often dost thou utter that with thy tongue which thou wouldst not make good with thy deeds.”
― quote from The Mabinogion
“And then Gwalchmai said, ‘No one should distract an ordained knight from his thoughts in a discourteous way, for perhaps he has either suffered a loss or he is thinking about the woman he loves best.”
― quote from The Mabinogion
“At that time Math son of Mathonwy could not live unless his feet were in the lap of a virgin, except when the turmoil of war prevented him.”
― quote from The Mabinogion
“So they declared a new emperor. And he sent a threatening letter to Maxen. However, it was not so much a letter as ‘If you come and if you ever come to Rome!’ That letter and the news came to Maxen in Caerllion. And from there he sent a letter to the man who claimed to be emperor of Rome. There was in that letter, too, nothing but ‘If I go to Rome, and if I go!”
― quote from The Mabinogion
“Poverty, her mother has written, makes you clever, and Honora knows that this is true.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Sea Glass
“It's not that students don't "get" Kafka's humor but that we've taught them to see humor as something you get -- the same way we've taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke -- that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. It's hard to put into words up at the blackboard, believe me. You can tell them that maybe it's good they don't "get" Kafka. You can ask them to imagine his art as a kind of door. To envision us readers coming up and pounding on this door, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it, we don't know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and pushing and kicking, etc. That, finally, the door opens...and it opens outward: we've been inside what we wanted all along. Das ist komisch.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
“It said that the mission’s copying costs were too high, so would she please type two hundred fifty copies of the attached letter in addition to her other duties.”
― Stephen R. Donaldson, quote from The Mirror of Her Dreams
“نعم، في كل خطوة في الحياة نصادف إحباطاً و خيبة و إهانة. فكيف لا تصبح شخصيتنا ممزقة؟ و كيف لا نشعر بهويتنا مهددة؟ كيف لا نشعر بأننا نعيش في عالم يمتلكه الآخرون و يخضع لقواعد يمليها الآخرون.”
― Amin Maalouf, quote from In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong
“We often told ourselves off for wasting time in chairs, fully dressed, talking, when we could be doing the same, lying down in bed, face to face and naked. That precious time before love-making is ill-served by the pseudo-clinical term, ‘foreplay’. The world would narrow and deepen, our voices would sink into the warmth of our bodies, the conversation became associative and unpredictable. Everything was touch and breath. Certain simple phrases came to me which I didn’t say out loud because they sounded so banal - Here we are, or, This again or Yes, this. Like a moment in a recurring dream, these spacious, innocent minutes were forgotten until we were back inside them. When we were, our lives returned to the essentials and began again. When we fell silent, we would lie so close we were mouth to mouth, delaying the union which bound us all the more because of this prelude.”
― Ian McEwan, quote from Enduring Love
The Dream of Perpetu...
The Tent
You Have to Stop Thi...
The Ladies' Paradise
Special Forces - Sol...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.
