Favorite Book Quotes?

By Kate Riley March 23, 2017

It’s been a lazy spring break for us here. While many friends are out of town, some away on tropical vacations (I wish!) I’ve been sitting at home doing a lot of nothing. :) It feels good, especially since I’ll be traveling abroad next month. I’m off to Scandinavia for 12 days with a friend, and I can’t wait to explore those countries.

I used to read 1-2 books a month for leisure, but I noticed in the past year that had fallen off significantly as I absorbed most information online. Too much.

For the past three mornings I’ve been waking up early and reading a book that I’ve been meaning to read for years. Three people mentioned this book to me in the past month so I took it as a sign and put it at the top of my list. I wasn’t disappointed. I loved reading this book this week with my morning coffee while everyone else slept upstairs.

Have you read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho? So many friends of mine had read it so I wanted to join the club. There are several famous quotes from the book, but this is a popular one, and a new favorite:

 

 

I love that. So simple and so true, and I needed to be reminded of it. What about you? Do you have an all time favorite quote from a book? I’d love to read yours :)

22 comments

  1. Have you read Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult? So many passages stuck with me from that book! It was my favorite read from 2016 & her best in my opinion!

  2. “It is a lovely oddity of human nature that a person is more inclined to interrupt two people in conversation than one person alone with a book.”
    ― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

    Looking forward to coming back to this post and reading others’ favorite quotes!

  3. My favorite one is. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.– H.Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You

  4. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans for hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11, Bible
    I daily cling to hope.

  5. “I really don’t have the time to discuss the errors of your value judgements.”
    ― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

  6. I’m weird and write down all kinds of quotes because words are my favorite whether they’re from books, movies or articles. So I have a few I’ll share if you don’t mind :)
    “I only care what you think of yourself. If you feel your value lies in being merely decorative I fear that someday you might find yourself believing that’s all you really are. Time erodes such beauty, but what it cannot diminish is the wonderful workings of your mind: your humor, your kindness and your moral courage. These are the things I cherish so in you.” -Marmee (Little Women, 1994).
    “There are few things in life so beautiful they hurt: swimming in the ocean while it rains, reading alone in empty libraries, the sea of stars that appear when you’re miles away from the neon lights of the city, bars after 2am, a bed of roses in bloom, walking in the wilderness, all the phases of the moon, the things we do not yet know about the universe, and you.” -Beau Taplin (my favorite poet)
    “There is only one of you in all of time; your expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.” -Martha Graham
    “One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.” -The Alchemist
    “There is always something left to love,” -One Hundred Years of Solitude

    • Wow Elizabeth, quite an assortment, not weird at all!! Such a wonderful reminder of true beauty from Little Women. LOVE the Taplin quote, those last two words.

  7. “The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”
    ― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
    That book is one of the five books I always keep on my night table. Makes you think and laugh and cry, all at the same time.

  8. I want both. Good burdens to hold me down to the ones I love, but also lightness and freedom to feel and explore. Must we choose?
    Love this one, thank you for sharing it.

  9. I’m a Children’s Librarian so mine is from Charlotte”s Web…
    “You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in Telford is a tremendous thing.”

  10. That should read… “that in itself is a tremendous thing.”

    Darn autocorrect!

  11. “Not one day in anyone’s life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy, or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’s-syndrome child. Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example. Each smallest act of kindness—even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile—reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will. All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined—those dead, those living, those generations yet to come—that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength—to the very survival of the human tapestry. Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day.”
    ― Dean Koontz, From the Corner of His Eye

  12. ‘Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” – The Sun Also Rises

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