“(...) ¿qué era el tiempo si nadie podía medirlo, si nada podía acusar su paso? El tiempo solo se mostraba en las hojas secas, en las heridas que cicatrizaban, en la carcoma que devoraba, en el óxido que se extendía, y en los corazones que se cansaban. Si nadie estaba allí para señalarlo, el tiempo no era nada, absolutamente nada.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“He had learned from experience that what he succeeded in putting down on paper was only ever a pale reflection of what he had imagined, and so he had come to accept that this would only be half as good as the original, half as acceptable as the flawless, unachievable novel that had acted as a guide, and which he imagined pulsating mockingly behind each book like some ghostly presence.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“Striving to achieve a dream is never a waste of time.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“Before cruelly vilifying them from a great height, the mudslingers at newspapers and journals should bear in mind that all artistic endeavors were by and large a mixture of effort and imagination, the embodiment of a solitary endeavor, of a sometimes long-nurtured dream, when they were not a desperate bid to give life meaning.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“Merrick belonged to that class of reader who was able to forget with amazing ease the hand moving the characters behind the scenes of the novel.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“If Wells recognized any merit in [Henry] James, it was his undeniable talent for using very long sentences in order to say nothing at all. p. 516”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“[A] writer’s most powerful weapon, his true strength, was his intuition, and regardless of whether he had any talent, if the critics combined to discredit an author’s nose for things, he would be reduced to a fearful creature who took a mistakenly guarded, absurdly cautious approach to his work, which would end up stifling his latent genius.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“Time could only be seen in the falling leaves, a wound that healed, a woodworm's tunneling, rust that spread, and hearts that grew weary. Without anyone to discern it, time was nothing, nothing at all.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“(...) el tiempo nunca se pierde tratando de conseguir un sueño.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“And now that Wells had heard him laugh, he wondered whether the so-called Elephant Man had not in fact been smiling at him from the moment he stepped into the room, a warm, friendly smile intended to sooth the discomfort his appearance produced in his guests, a smile no one would ever see.
As he left the room, he felt a tear roll down his cheek.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“...the wrath of God pales beside that of man.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“We are the authors of our own fate-we write it each day with every one of our actions.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“Why had his mother gone to the trouble of bringing him into the world if the most exciting moment in his life was having been made lame by a bayonet?”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“Time is a river sweeping away all that is born towards the darkest shore.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“Sometimes the best way to find out what we want is to choose what we do not want.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“¿Se han preguntado alguna vez qué es lo que convierte en responsables a los hombres? Yo se lo diré: que solo tienen una oportunidad de hacer cada cosa. Si existieran máquinas que nos permitieran corregir hasta nuestros errores más estúpidos viviríamos en un mundo lleno de irresponsables.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“It is a question of will, Mr. Wells," he said, striving to imbue his slurred voice with a tone of authority. "That's all.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“Intelligence could not thrive where there was no change and no necessity for change.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“Ultimately it was man's limited senses which established the boundaries of the world.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“There is little more I can add short of dissecting the man, or going into intimate details such as the modest proportions and slight southeasterly curvature of his manhood.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“...but there are stories that cannot begin at their beginning, and perhaps this is one of them.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“From then on, he was convinced that the universe dazzled mankind with volcanic eruptions, but had its own secret way of communicating with the select few, people like Andrew who looked at reality as though it were a strip of wallpaper covering up something else.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“Hinter jeder Erfindung steckt die Anstrengung eines Menschen, ein der Lösung eines Problems geweihtes Leben, um einen Mechanismus zu erfinden, der den Menschen überlebt und dann zu der Welt gehört, die ohne ihn weitergeht. Solange es Menschen gibt, die sich nicht damit begnügen, die Früchte der Bäume zu verzehren oder Trommeln zu schlagen, damit es regnet, die sich entschließen, ihre Intelligenz zu nutzen, um über die Rolle eines Parasiten im Garten Gottes hinauszuwachsen, so lange wird die Wissenschaft nicht sterben.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“...for what was time if there was no one to measure it, if there was nothing to experience its passing? Time cold only be seen in the falling leaves, a wound that healed, a woodworm's tunneling, rust that spread, and hearts that grew weary. Without anyone to discern it, time was nothing, nothing at all.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“Mientras haya hombres que no se contenten con comer las frutas de los árboles o con aporrear tambores suplicando lluvia, y decidan usar su inteligencia para rebasar el papel de meros parásitos de la obra de Dios, la ciencia nunca sucumbirá.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“Wealth brings poverty in its wake, thought Andrew,”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“Somehow this literary genre, which most people condemned, acted as a sort of counterbalance to Charles's soul; it was the ballast that prevented him from lurching into the serious or melancholy, unlike Andrew, who had been unable to adopt his cousin's casual attitude to life, and to whom everything seemed so achingly profound, imbed with that absurd solemnity that the transience of of existence conferred upon even the smallest act.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“It was the gaze of a person who yearns for something and refuses to believe it will never be hers, because hope is the only thing she has left.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“The answer was obvious: the passage of time, which transformed the volatile present into that finished, unalterable painting called the past, a canvas man always executed blindly, with erratic brushstrokes that only made sense when one stepped far enough away from it to be able to admire it as a whole.”
― Félix J. Palma, quote from The Map of Time
“The principles of catching rumours were, in fact, similar to the principals of catching dreams, but because rumour was weightier, the catcher had to be positioned closer to the ground. Rumour flew low, dreams flew high, and somewhere in between were prayers.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from A Year of Marvellous Ways
“In fact, the term “holy war” originates not with Islam but with the Christian Crusaders who first used it to give theological legitimacy to what was in reality a battle for land and trade routes. “Holy war” was not a term used by Muslim conquerors, and it is in no way a proper definition of the word jihad. There are a host of words in Arabic that can be definitively translated as “war”; jihad is not one of them. The word jihad literally means “a struggle,” “a striving,” or “a great effort.” In its primary religious connotation (sometimes referred to as “the greater jihad”), it means the struggle of the soul to overcome the sinful obstacles that keep a person from God. This is why the word jihad is nearly always followed in the Quran by the phrase “in the way of God.”
― Reza Aslan, quote from No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam
“Alcohol has its own well-know defects as a medication for depression but no one has ever suggested - ask any doctor - that it is not the most effective anti-anxiety agent yet known.”
― Joan Didion, quote from Blue Nights
“With every new reading, I’m gripped by the ending’s harsh lessons. ‘Don’t expect anything of him,’ it seems to be telling me. ‘Even if someday he realizes his own folly, he is dangerous and beyond redemption. Get out!”
― quote from The Only Girl in the World: A Memoir
“L’amour, c’est très compliqué. C’est à la fois la plus extraordinaire et la pire chose qui puisse arriver. Vous le découvrirez un jour. L’amour, ça peut faire très mal. Vous ne devez pas pour autant avoir peur de tomber, et surtout pas de tomber amoureux, car l’amour, c’est aussi très beau, mais comme tout ce qui est beau, ça vous éblouit et ça vous fait mal aux yeux. C’est pour ça que souvent, on pleure après.”
― Joël Dicker, quote from La verdad sobre el caso Harry Quebert
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.
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