“The calendar was a mathematical progression with arbitrary surprises.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence
“Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation today, next year die, and their experience with them.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence
“As children we accept magic as a normal part of life. Everything seems rooted in it, everything conspires in magic terms.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence
“Walls, windows, roof, verandah–entirely commonplace, mean even–moved her with the austere poetry of their function. Here a man sheltered from and diminished the horror and vulgarity of the world by the simplicity of his arrangements for living in it.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence
“the one thing to which the human spirit could always accommodate itself was chaos and misfortune.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence
“The world exists for the education of each man. There is no age or state of society, or mode of action in history, to which there is not somewhat corresponding in his life. Everything tends in a most wonderful manner to abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. He should see that he can live all history in his own person. He must sit at home with might and main, and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but know that he is greater than all the geography and all the governments of the world . . .”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence
“When he got to the shoe putting-on stage he called Hosain again. Putting on and taking off his own shoes and boots were activities at which he drew the line if there was a man available to perform these services. He had learned to draw the line in Muzzafirabad where his first CO, Colonel Gawstone, advised him never to stoop if he could help it. The climate wasn't right for it. Mrs. Gawstone had stooped to pick up a glove and keeled right over and never got up. They had buried her the next day.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence
“When you trust everyone, you engage in business opportunities that violate the Commandment of Control. You allow others to dictate your financial road trip. And when that happens, you crash and burn. There is only one person you can blindly trust in this world, and that is YOU.”
― M.J. DeMarco, quote from The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime!
“You must not love yourself. I’ll tell you, mademoiselle … your life belongs to you. Only a matter of treating your life a little better and maybe life would treat you better in return.”
― Maria La Serra, quote from The Proverbial Mr. Universe
“And in that moment he felt- for the first time that optimistic and cheerful boy allowed himself to feel- how badly made life was, how flawed. No matter how richly furnished you made it, with all the noise and variet of Something, Nothing always found a way in, seeped through the cracks and patches. Mr. Feld was right; life was like baseball, filled with loss and error, with bad hops and wild pitches, a game in which even champions lost almost as often as they won and even the best hitters were put out 70 percent of the time”
― Michael Chabon, quote from Summerland
“Yes. I heard that everyone liked you enormously.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘maybe some people did. Maybe they meant in the past, before everything changed. Anyway. It’s easy for people to like you when you’re dead. It’s a pity none of them could see their way to liking me when it mattered to me, when I was alive.’
‘You’re still alive, Oscar. You’re not dead. Had you forgotten?’
‘Look, I don’t want to talk about whether I’m alive or dead, and I don’t want to talk about my old life. I don’t want to about any of that.’
‘Why not?’
‘’Because I’m ashamed, I said.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, quote from The Apple Tart of Hope
“A woman with legs up to my chest emerged from one of the illustrious establishments. She was shaped like an hourglass, but had the shrunken face of a mummy.”
― Julian North, quote from Age of Order
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.