Quotes from Viper's Tangle

“Πλησιάζεις εύκολα μια ζωντανή ψυχή, και μέσα απ’ το έγκλημα, και μέσα από τα πιο θλιβερά βίτσια, - μα η βλακεία είναι αδιαπέραστη.”
― François Mauriac, quote from Viper's Tangle

“Πόσο είναι παράξενο, σ’ αυτές τις αρχές της ζωής που μας δίνεται λίγη ευτυχία, να μη μας προειδοποιεί καμία φωνή: Όσα χρόνια κι αν ζήσεις, δε θα ‘χεις άλλη χαρά στη ζωή σου απ’ αυτές τις λίγες ώρες. Απόλαυσέ τις ως την στερνή σταγόνα τους, γιατί, ύστερ’ απ’ αυτό, δεν υπάρχει τίποτα για σένα. Αυτή η πρώτη πηγή που βρήκες, είναι και η τελευταία. Σβήσε τη δίψα σου μια για πάντα: δε θα ξαναπιείς πια.”
― François Mauriac, quote from Viper's Tangle

“I felt at one and the same time quite close, within reach of my hand, and yet an infinite distance away, an unknown world of goodness. Often Isa had said to me: 'You, who see nothing but evil.... You, who see evil everywhere....' It was true, and it was not true.”
― François Mauriac, quote from Viper's Tangle

“I remained standing in the middle of the room, swaying on my feet as though I had received a blow. I thought of my life and saw what it had been. No one could swim against such a current of mud. I had been a man so horrible that he could have no friend. But wasn't that, I asked myself, because I had always been incapable of wearing a disguise? If all men went through life with unmasked faces, as I had done for half a century, one might be surprised to find how little difference there was between them. But, in fact, no one lives with his face uncovered, no one. Most men ape greatness or nobility. Though they do not know it, they conform to certain fixed types, literary or other. This the saints know, and they hate and despise themselves because they see themselves with unclouded eyes. I should not have been so universally condemned had I not been so defenseless, so open, and so naked.”
― François Mauriac, quote from Viper's Tangle

“Even the genuinely good cannot, unaided, learn to love. To penetrate beyond the absurdities, the vices, and, above all, the stupidities of human creatures, one must possess the secret of a love which the world has now forgotten. Until that secret shall have been discovered, all betterment in conditions of life will be in vain”
― François Mauriac, quote from Viper's Tangle

“Против некоего определённого вида тупости я бессилен.”
― François Mauriac, quote from Viper's Tangle

“Время, умелый вор, мало-помалу перетаскивает всё на свете на свой огромный пыльный склад.”
― François Mauriac, quote from Viper's Tangle

“Мы никогда не знаем, чего мы в действительности хотим, и вовсе не любим того, что, думается нам, мы любим.”
― François Mauriac, quote from Viper's Tangle

“[...] против некоего определенного вида тупости я бессилен. Нетрудно найти путь к живой душе, увидев ее даже сквозь преступления, сквозь самые плачевные пороки, но вульгарность – непреодолимая преграда.”
― François Mauriac, quote from Viper's Tangle

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Popular quotes

“To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from Collected Fictions

“He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon Gow had hinted, the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters.”
― Edith Wharton, quote from Ethan Frome

“I live in a world without magic or miracles. A place where there are no clairvoyants or shapeshifters, no angels or superhuman boys to save you. A place where people die and music disintegrates and things suck.”
― Katja Millay, quote from The Sea of Tranquility

“For indeed you have a choice. You can flee and hide, and wait to be found. You can live out your days in terror, without meaning. Or you can take the harder choice, and you can save them.”
― Juliet Marillier, quote from Daughter of the Forest

“She had challenged him on this point one night at Anne and George's, inhibitions weakened by Ronrico: "Explain this Mass to me!"

There was a silence as he sat still, apparently looking at the dinner plates and chicken bones. "Consider the Star of David," he said quietly. "Two triangles, one pointing down, one pointing up. I find this a powerful image—the Divine reaching down, humanity reaching upward. And in the center, an intersection, where the Divine and human meet. The Mass takes place in that space." His eyes lifted and met hers: a look of lucid candor. "I understand it as a place where the Divine and the human are one. And as a promise, perhaps. That God will reach toward us if we reach toward Him, that we and our most ordinary human acts—like eating bread and drinking wine—can be transformed and made sacred.”
― Mary Doria Russell, quote from The Sparrow

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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.