“Charity, if you have the means, is a personal choice, but charity which is expected or compelled is simply a polite word for slavery.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from The Pillars of Creation
“When the whole world is crazy, it doesn't pay to be sane.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from The Pillars of Creation
“Wizard's Seventh Rule
Life is the future, not the past.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from The Pillars of Creation
“If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from The Pillars of Creation
“You don't love me, Sebastian. You don't have any idea what love really is. You can't love anyone or anything until you love your own existence, first. Love can only grow out of a respect for your own life. When you love yourself, your own existence, then you love someone who can enhance your existence, share it with you, and make it more pleasurable. When you hate yourself and believe your existence is evil, then you can only hate, you can only experience the shell of love, that longing for something good, but you have nothing to base it in but hatred. You taint the very concept of love, Sebastian, with your corrupted longing for it. You want me only to justify your hatred, to be your partner in self-loathing.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from The Pillars of Creation
“You can't love anyone or anything until you love your own existence first. Love can only grow out of a respect for your own life.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from The Pillars of Creation
“Life is the future, not the past. The past can teach us, through experience, how to accomplish things in the future, comfort us with cherished memories, and provide the foundation of what has already been accomplished. But only the future holds life. To live in the past is to embrace what is dead. To live life to its fullest, each day must be created a new.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from The Pillars of Creation
“It was important for a person not to let their body or mind become slow and dull. Oba believed it was important to learn new things. He believed it was important to grow. He thought it was important for a person to use what they had learned. That was how people grew.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from The Pillars of Creation
“The woman had a voice that could unwind a good rope.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from The Pillars of Creation
“The ground was soaked with blood. What had been Clovis was no longer remotely recognizable. His jaw was shattered and hung completely unhinged to the side. One eye socket had been altogether caved in. Oba’s knee had broken the man’s sternum and crushed his chest. It was glorious.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from The Pillars of Creation
“Your right. We do spend a lot of time worrying about our looks, instead of focusing on what's inside. - Raven
The artist has the power to capture that. To express what he thinks about the subject. I thought that was much more romantic then seeing myself in a cold, stark glass reflection. - Alexander”
― Ellen Schreiber, quote from Kissing Coffins
“If stakes and garlic were the top two things that could kill a vampire, ninth grade gym was a close third.”
― Heather Brewer, quote from Ninth Grade Slays
“Then it all came together—every particle of discontent, nostalgia, and resistance in England—fusing in the North. The North: two words to describe a territory and a state of mind. England was conquered and civilized from the South upwards, and as one approached the borders of Scotland—first through Yorkshire and then Durham and finally Northumberland—everything dwindled. The great forests gave way first to stunted trees and then to open, windswept moors; the towns shrank to villages and then to hamlets; cultivated fields were replaced by empty, wild spaces. Here the Cistercian monasteries flourished, they who removed themselves from the centers of civilization and relied on manual labour as a route to holiness. The sheep became scrawnier and their wool thicker, and the men became lawless and more secretive, clannish. Winter lasted eight months and even the summers were grey and raw, leading Northumberland men to claim they had “two winters—a white one and a green one.” Since ancient times these peripheral lands had gone their own way, little connected to anything further south. A few great warrior families—the Percys, the Nevilles, the Stanleys—had claimed overlordship of these dreary, cruel wastes, and through them, the Crown had demanded obeisance. But”
― Margaret George, quote from The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers
“All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits - practical, emotional, and intellectual - systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be." - William James”
― Charles Duhigg, quote from The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
“Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Black Cat
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.