Quotes from The Twenty-One Balloons

180 pages

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“Half of this story is true and the other half might very well have happened.”
― quote from The Twenty-One Balloons


“The best way of travel, however, if you aren't in any hurry at all, if you don't care where you are going, if you don't like to use your legs, if you don't want to be annoyed at all by any choice of directions, is in a balloon. In a balloon, you can decide only when to start, and usually when to stop. The rest is left entirely to nature.”
― quote from The Twenty-One Balloons


“It seems strange to me that mechanical progress always seems to leave the slower demands of elegance far behind.”
― quote from The Twenty-One Balloons


“That's the peculiar thing about nature," explained Mr. F., "it guards it's rarest treasures with greatest care.”
― quote from The Twenty-One Balloons


Popular quotes

“You have to trust someone before you can have rituals with them.”
― Rachel Klein, quote from The Moth Diaries


“There is, and always has been, a widespread belief among the more comfortable classes that the poverty and suffering of the masses are due to their lack of industry, frugality, and intelligence. This belief, which at once soothes the sense of responsibility and flatters by its suggestion of superiority, is probably even more prevalent in countries like the United States, where all men are politically equal, and where, owing to the newness of society, the differentiation into classes has been of individuals rather than of families, than it is in older countries, where the lines of separation have been longer, and are more sharply, drawn.”
― Henry George, quote from Progress and Poverty


“A man cannot love himself; he can only idolize it, and over the idol delightfully tyrannize - without purpose. The great gift which the simple idolatry of self gives is lack of further purpose”
― Charles Williams, quote from Descent into Hell


“I guess I can picture things once they're done - I just can't picture actually doing them.”
― Mark Leyner, quote from The Tetherballs of Bougainville


“So quickly? Todd cleared away another wave of tears and looked down at the body on the table. Dempsey’s eye was still half-open, but it didn’t look back at him any longer. Where there’d been a sliver of bright life, where there’d been mischief and shared rituals—where, in short, there’d been Dempsey—there was nothing.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Coldheart Canyon


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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.