In the vast realm of literature, there exists a treasure trove of timeless wisdom, encapsulated within the pages of beloved books. From classic literature to contemporary works, these literary gems offer profound insights, evoke powerful emotions, and spark endless contemplation. For those with a penchant for profound thought and a love for language, delving into the world of book quotes can be an enriching journey. Let’s embark on this voyage together, exploring the merits of reading these quotes and uncovering some of the most memorable ones from literature’s vast landscape.
Why Read Book Quotes?
At first glance, one might wonder, what’s the allure of book quotes? Why not simply read the entire book instead? While immersing oneself in the entirety of a literary work is undoubtedly enriching, book quotes offer a unique experience of distilled wisdom and beauty. Here’s why they’re worth exploring:
- Condensed Wisdom: Book quotes distill the essence of a book into bite-sized portions, offering profound insights and thought-provoking ideas in just a few words. They serve as potent capsules of wisdom, delivering powerful messages that linger long after they’re read.
- Inspiration and Reflection: Whether it’s a poignant line, a witty remark, or a stirring passage, book quotes have the power to inspire, provoke thought, and evoke deep emotions. They offer moments of reflection, prompting readers to ponder life’s complexities and truths.
- Accessible Entry Points: Book quotes serve as accessible entry points into the world of literature. They can pique curiosity, enticing readers to explore the full breadth of a book or discover new authors and genres.
- Cultural Significance: Many book quotes have transcended their original context to become iconic cultural references. They resonate across generations, shaping collective consciousness and influencing popular discourse.
Exploring 100 Great Book Quotes
Without further ado, let’s delve into a curated selection of 100 great book quotes spanning genres, eras, and authors. These quotes capture the essence of their respective works, offering glimpses into the profound wisdom, beauty, and complexity of literature. Whether you’re a seasoned bibliophile or a novice reader, there’s something here for everyone, traversing through the timeless wisdom of Leo Tolstoy, the lyrical prose of Maya Angelou, the philosophical musings of Albert Camus, and the poignant observations of Harper Lee. From the immortal lines of Shakespeare to the contemporary insights of Haruki Murakami, each quote invites readers on a journey of discovery, offering glimpses into the human condition, the mysteries of existence, and the beauty of language.
In a world inundated with noise and distraction, the timeless wisdom encapsulated within book quotes serves as a guiding light, illuminating the path towards deeper understanding and appreciation of the written word. Whether seeking inspiration, solace, or simply a moment of reflection, these literary gems offer endless possibilities for exploration and enlightenment. So, let us embark on this journey together, as we unlock the wisdom contained within the pages of the greatest books of all time.
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Most Famous Best Book Quotes of All Time
100. "Why, sometimes, I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." ~ Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass 99. "What does the brain matter compared with the heart?" ~ Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway 98. "Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever." ~ Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See 97. "All human wisdom is summed up in these two words – ‘Wait and hope." ~ Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo 96. "Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever." ~ Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club 95. "You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter." Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 94. "Time moves slowly, but passes quickly." ~ Alice Walker, The Color Purple 93. "And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." ~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist 92. "Each time you happen to me all over again." ~ Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence 91. "It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you." ~ Roald Dahl, The Witches 90. "So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible." ~ Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth 89. "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun." ~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 88. "The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude." ~ Kate Chopin, The Awakening 87. "He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart." ~ Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart 86. "It was a pleasure to burn." ~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 85. "You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget." ~ Cormac McCarthy, The Road 84. "Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger." ~ Yann Martel, Life of Pi 83. "The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places." ~ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms 82. "There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm." ~ Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark 81. "You pierce my soul. I am half agony. Half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. Jane Austen, Persuasion"
Enjoying the quotes? Check out these books. They are a treasure trove.
Best quotes from books continued …
80. "Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat." ~ Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man 79. "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." ~ George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four 78. "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." ~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina 77. "Ever’body’s askin’ that. ‘What we comin’ to?’ Seems to me we don’t never come to nothin’. Always on the way." ~ John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath 76. "And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby 75. "I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am." ~ Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar 74. "A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well — or ill?" John Steinbeck, East of Eden 73. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair." ~ Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities 72. "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you." ~ Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre 71. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince 70. "This above all: To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." ~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet 69. "Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all." ~ Toni Morrison, Beloved 68. "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." ~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights 67. "Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart." ~ Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore 66. "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." ~ Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca 65. "Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." ~ J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye 64. "From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood." ~ Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 63. "Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot." ~ Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s 62. "Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." ~ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey 61. "We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep." ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Why are these famous quotes presented on a dark background?
Answer: Dark background significantly reduces the blue light that comes out of the computer and soothes your eyes.
More inspiring quotes from books …
60. "I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it." ~ Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises 59. "The same substance composes us — the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star — we are all one, all moving to the same end." ~ P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins 58. "Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you go on even though you’re scared." ~ Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give 57. "How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined." ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah 56. "There is always something left to love." ~ Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude 55. "Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living." ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close 54. "Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost." ~ Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being 53. "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." ~ J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 52. "The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything." ~ Isabel Allende, City of the Beasts 51. "Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it." ~ Mark Twain 50. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." ~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest 49. "Anything worth dying for is certainly worth living for." ~ Joseph Heller, Catch-22 48. "Get busy living or get busy dying." ~ Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption 47. "There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after" ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit 46. "All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust." ~ J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan "45. "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." ~ George Orwell, Animal Farm 44. "If you have the guts to be yourself, other people’ll pay your price." ~ John Updike, Rabbit, Run 43. "Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches." ~ William Goldman, The Princess Bride 42. "Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself." ~ Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time "41. "The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42." ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Why interrupt the flow of the best book quotes from time to time?
Because short quotes from books are condensed mental food, and must be consumed with caution in the right doses in order to be effective. That is why we give you little commercial breaks. And you can bet we will show you only products that make sense.
Most famous book quotes continues …
40. "Love is holy because it is like grace – the worthiness of its object is never really what matters."
~ Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
39. "I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in
my own way."
~ Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
38. "There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love.
I have loved. I will love."
~ Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
"37. "The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet."
~ Stephen King, The Stand
36. "Time is the longest distance between two places."
~ Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
35. "Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that.
The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading."
~ Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
34. "The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past."
~ William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
33. "Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"
~ L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
32. "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."
~ J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
31. "Tomorrow I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day."
~ Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
30. "I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship."
~ Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
29. "There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
~ Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
28. "Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and
you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are
Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand."
~ Margery Williams, Velveteen Rabbit
27. "We accept the love we think we deserve."
~ Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
26. "Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’
‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing."
~ E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
25. "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun
in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through
no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."
~ Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
24. "A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously
translates what he hears into something he can understand."
~ Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy
23. "There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?"
"The mood will pass, sir.”"
~ P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters
22. "Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are."
~ Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
21. "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you
know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer defeat. If you know neither
the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War
A great quote from a book is better relished watching a great movie.
Here are some examples of great books converted to great movies. They hold both earthly and heavenly wisdom and should be in your collection (most likely they already are, but just in case …).
Finally, the top 20 of the best book quotes of all time …
20. "Never underestimate the power of perseverance. Keep going, even when things get tough." ~ Robert Greene and 50 Cent, The 50th Law 19. " Woman and children can afford to be careless, men can not." ~ Mario Puzo, The Godfather 18. "All human wisdom is contained in these two words - Wait and Hope." ~ Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo 17. "What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so." ~ Mark Twain 16. "Andy Dufresne - who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side." ~ Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption 15. "All warfare is based on deception." ~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War 14. "And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence." ~ Bertrand Russell, Silhouettes in Satire 13. "There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers 12. "It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live." ~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables 11. "Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful." ~ Mary Shelley, Frankenstein 10. "It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them." ~ P.G. Wodehouse, The Man Upstairs and Other Stories 9. "When you play the game of thrones you win or you die." ~ George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones 8. "I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe." ~ Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch 7. "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays 6. "My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time." ~ Charles Dickens, David Copperfield 5. "All we can know is that we know nothing. And that’s the height of human wisdom." ~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace 4. "The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive." ~ John Green, Looking for Alaska 3. "Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." ~ Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited 2. "All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts." ~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It 1. "But man is not made for defeat,’ he said. ‘A man can be destroyed but not defeated." ~ Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea