“If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“We're a government that believes in everybody having the illusion of free will.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“When the State withers, humanity flowers.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“When we pray we admit defeat.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“Perhaps, all these years, the historiographers had been unwilling to recognize history as a spiral, perhaps because a spiral was so difficult to describe. Easier to photograph the spiral from the top, easier to flatten the spring into a coil.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“I am instructed by the Home Secretary to read out the following. . . . It is a prayer devised by the Ministry of Propaganda. . . . ‘It is conceivable that the forces of death which at present are ravaging the esculent life of this planet have intelligence, in which case we beseech them to leave off. It we have done wrong--allowing in our blindness natural impulse to overcome reason--we are, of course, heartily sorry. But we submit that we have already suffered sufficiently for this wrong and we firmly resolve never to sin again. Amen.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“Why are we fighting? We're fighting because we're soldiers. That's simple enough, isn't it? For what cause are we fighting? Simple again. We're fighting to protect our country, and, in a wider sense, the whole of the English-Speaking Union. From whom? No concern of ours. Where? Wherever we're sent. Now, Foxe, I trust all this is perfectly clear.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“Late December, in Bridgwater, Somerset, Western Province, a middle-aged man named Thomas Wharnton, going home from work shortly after midnight, was set upon by youths. These knifed him, stripped him, spitted him, basted him, carved him, served him—all openly and without shame in one of the squares of the town. A hungry crowd clamoured for hunks and slices, kept back—that the King's Peace might not be broken—by munching and dripping greyboys.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“The more sin he sees, the more his belief in Original Sin is confirmed. Everyone likes to have his deepest convictions confirmed: that is one of the most abiding of human satisfaction.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“What's done can't be undone. How do I fit into this new world? I should have been warned, somebody should have told me. How was I to know that that sort of world wasn't going to go on for ever?”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“What destroys the dream? What destroys it, eh?..........Disappointment. Disappointment. Disappointment.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“History is a wheel. This sort of world can't go on for ever either.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“Was war, then, the big solution after all? Were those crude early theorists right? War the great aphrodisiac, the great source of world adrenaline, the solvent of ennui, Angst, melancholia, accidia, spleen? War itself a massive sexual act, culminating in a detumescence which was not mere metaphorical dying? War, finally, the controller, the trimmer and excisor, the justifier of fertility?”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-etre - I go to seek a great perhaps.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
Anthony Burgess
Born place: in Harpurhey, England, The United Kingdom
Born date February 25, 1917
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“I follow his stare at the speckles of stars. Suddenly I wonder, "Aren't you guys supposed to, like, sparkle or something?" And immediately wish I hadn't. Frederik stands up so quickly that he doesn't disturb the sand. He grabs the front of my shirt and growls--his eyes are black as the night sky along the horizon, and red veins fray against the white of his eyes. His sharp canines are exposed. "I.Don't.Sparkle." He lets go of me and becomes regular bored Frederik again, no fangs, no bloodshot eyes. Just a dude sitting on the beach at night.”
― Zoraida Córdova, quote from The Vicious Deep
“Porque si no hay nadie en el mundo a quien le importes, ¿realmente existes?”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Prince
“I know this perfectly well, but it was precisely this that I liked - her thinking me silly. Such a peculiar vice: to be secretly pleased to be allowed to observe that one is being slightly robbed.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten
“It's only a sure defeat when you stop trying.”
― Ann Aguirre, quote from Horde
“More than twelve hundred boys arrived safely. It took them a year and a half.”
― Linda Sue Park, quote from A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story
Pale Fire
Every Day
Macbeth
Emma
The Ruins of GorlanBookQuoters 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.
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