“There’s an Oriental saying I like: “If aggression meets empty space it tends to defeat itself.”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
“I snorted. ‘For a great sultan who is lord and ruler of all that he surveys, his English is lamentably poor. He can’t even spell England properly.’
Still holding the note, Mr Ascham looked up at me. ‘Is that so? Tell me, Bess, do you speak his language? Any Arabic or Turkish-Arabic?’
‘You know that I do not.’
‘Then however lamentable his English may be, he still speaks your language while you cannot speak his. To me, this gives him a considerable advantage over you. Always pause before you criticise, and never unduly criticise one who has made an effort at something you yourself have not even attempted.”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
“So it is with Moslem women and their veils,’ Michelangelo said. ‘When they saw Muhammad’s wives wearing veils, they sought to imitate them, and so now nearly all Islamic women wear veils even though there is no stipulation in their Holy Koran that they do so.”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
“That’s not the whole of it. As with many other faiths—including our own Christian one—a small group of zealots have distorted Islam to further their own agenda. When many women took to imitating the fashions of the Prophet’s wives, some Moslem men saw an opportunity to put all women under their thumb. They espoused foul laws like those allowing a man to beat his wife or force her into his bed.”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
“The Church’s war against women occurred not under Christ—who by all accounts held women as equals to men—but through the writings of St Irenaeus and Tertullian, and that most cruel woman-hater of them all, St Paul, whose hostile views on women were unfortunately included in the Bible. But let me be clear, it is not only a Catholic problem; it is a Christian one: Martin Luther, the scourge of the old Church, shares its views on women. He once wrote: “Girls begin to talk and to stand on their feet sooner than boys because weeds always grow up more quickly than good crops.” Weeds! Weeds!”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
“The problem, as I see it, are the twin human creations of marriage and religion. It is marriage and religion that make copulation complex and hurtful. Marriage brings up notions of trust, cuckoldry and ownership, while religion makes certain kinds of intimacy sinful.”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
“What people do in the name of religion is not necessarily religious. It often has baser reasons behind it.”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
Matthew Reilly
Born place: in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Born date July 2, 1974
See more on GoodReads
“Man's desires are limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he has not perceiv'd.”
― William Blake, quote from The Complete Illuminated Books
“I to właśnie wówczas, w ciemności, uświadomiłem sobie po raz pierwszy w życiu, że jedynie samotność jest w życiu człowieka stanem graniczącym z absolutnym spokojem wewnętrznym, z odzyskaniem indywidualności. Tylko w pochłaniającej wszystko pustce samotności, w ciemnościach zacierających kontury świata zewnętrznego można odczuć, że się jest sobą aż do granic zwątpienia, które uprzytamnia nagle własną nicość w rosnącym przeraźliwie ogromie wszechświata.”
― Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, quote from A World Apart
“It is one thing when prices drift downward over time due to innovation, scalability or other efficiencies. This might be considered “good” deflation and is familiar to any contemporary consumer who has seen prices of computers or wide-screen TVs fall year after year. It is another matter when prices are forced down by unnecessary monetary contraction, credit constraints, deleveraging, business failures, bankruptcies and mass unemployment. This may be considered “bad” deflation. This bad deflation was exactly what was required in order to return the most important currencies to their prewar parity with gold.”
― James Rickards, quote from Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis
“we have on earth exactly the amount of time that has been allotted to us, no more and no less. We really have precious little control.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Sandcastle Girls
“Of all the things that human beings make and do for each other, it is the unquantifiable ones that contribute most to human happiness.”
― Charles Eisenstein, quote from Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition
Bonk: The Curious Co...
I Feel Bad about My...
So Far from God
Woman: An Intimate G...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.
