“Marriage without struggle is like an unfired clay pot.
It is easily made, but it will not stand the test of time.”
― Allan Wolf, quote from The Watch That Ends the Night
“Man's fatal flaw is misplaced optimism.”
― Allan Wolf, quote from The Watch That Ends the Night
“Some folks is meant to make excuses. Some folks is meant to make history.”
― Allan Wolf, quote from The Watch That Ends the Night
“... my aim in writing The Watch That Ends the Night was not to present history. My aim was to present humanity. The people represented in this book lived and breathed and loved. They were as real as you or me. They could have been any one of us.”
― Allan Wolf, quote from The Watch That Ends the Night
“But most are fueled by hope.”
― Allan Wolf, quote from The Watch That Ends the Night
“Thank God (my wife) and I were both born poor
so the concept of fidelity was allowed to take root in us.”
― Allan Wolf, quote from The Watch That Ends the Night
“In vogue and cosmopolitan they clutch their Pomeranians and walk among the millionaires or watch from swayback steamer chairs”
― Allan Wolf, quote from The Watch That Ends the Night
“I'm not saying that French books are talented, and intelligent, and noble. They don't satisfy me either. But they're less boring than the Russian ones, and not seldom one finds in them the main element of creative work––a sense of personal freedom, which Russian authors don't have. I can't remember a single new book in which the author doesn't do his best, from the very first page, to entangle himself in all possible conventions and private deals with his conscience. One is afraid to speak of the naked body, another is bound hand and foot by psychological analysis, a third must have "a warm attitude towards humanity," a fourth purposely wallows for whole pages in descriptions of nature, lest he be suspected of tendentiousness... One insists on being a bourgeois in his work, another an aristocrat, etc. Contrivance, caution, keeping one's own counsel, but no freedom nor courage to write as one wishes, and therefore no creativity.
- A Boring Story”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Selected Stories
“There is a darkness in you. In all of us, probably. Beasts we keep chained. Ordinary men have to keep the chains strong, for if we let the beast loose then society will turn upon us with fiery vengeance. Kings though...well, who is there to turn upon them? So the chains are made of straw. It is the curse of kings, Helikaon, that they can become monsters. And they invariably do.”
― David Gemmell, quote from Shield of Thunder
“Farmer liked to tell his Harvard students that to be a good clinician you must never let a patient know that you have problems too, or that you’re in a
hurry.”
― Tracy Kidder, quote from Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World
“Louis-Cesare’s anger suddenly filled the small room like water, and in a heartbeat his eyes went from silver tinged to as solid as two antique coins.
I sat frozen, awash in a sea of power. I was beginning to understand why Mircea had wanted him along, only Daddy had failed to mention anything about the hair-trigger temper. I guess he assumed the red hair would clue me in.”
― Karen Chance, quote from Midnight's Daughter
“... sometimes good people [are] helpless... terrible things happen... to good people... there [are] sad endings as well as happy ones.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from The Fairy Godmother
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.