Quotes from The Twenty-One Balloons

180 pages

Rating: (19.4K votes)


“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

“John flung himself into a pseudo-karate stance, one hand poised behind him and one in front, posed like a cartoon cactus. I thought for an odd moment he had moved his limbs so fast they had made that whoosh sound through air but then I realized John was making that sound with his mouth.”
― David Wong, quote from John Dies at the End


“Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erraticaly in all directions, that the chance of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Feet of Clay


“That’s all anybody has got. It depends on how strong your fantasy is, and whether you really — really — in your own mind, fit into your own fantasy, whether you measure up to what you’ve fantasized. I don’t know what yours is, but I’ll bet you don’t come up to it.”
― James Dickey, quote from Deliverance


“I know.” Ryan took a deep breath and looked me in the eyes. “My life has been turned up-side-down these last few years. I feel like I've been living in this chaotic existence.But when I’m with you, I… I feel strangely at peace. I feel like I can trust you with my secrets. And you have something that no one else has. When I look at you,” his eyes held my gaze, “you take my breath away.”
― Tina Reber, quote from Love Unscripted


“It would seem that emotions are the curse, not death-emotions that appear to have developed upon a few freaks as a special curse from Malevolence. All right then. It is our emotions that are amiss. We are freaks, the world is fine, and let us all go have lobotomies to restore us to a natural state. We can leave the library then, go back to the creek lobotomized, and live on its banks as untroubled as any muskrat or reed. You first.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek


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About BookQuoters

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.