Invite your lit-lovers to dive into a treasure trove of literary brilliance with our collection of 148 remarkable quotes. Pulled from the depths of world literature, these quotes explore the human condition in all its complexity! Each quote is an invitation to ponder, learn, and cherish the power of words. So, without further adieu, let’s have a read!
1. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
2. “I would always rather be happy than dignified.” – Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
3. “It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.” – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
4. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
5. “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” – Ernest Hemingway
6. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
7. “Do I dare disturb the universe?” – T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
8. “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” – Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
9. “It’s no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then.” – Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
10. “Beware; for I am fearless and therefore powerful.” – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
11. “The world was hers for the reading.” – Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
12. “Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
13. “In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
14. “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
15. “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” – Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
16. “There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
17. “So it goes.” – Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
18. “We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.” – Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
19. “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King, On Writing
20. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
21. “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.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
22. “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
23. “The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.” – John Green, Looking for Alaska
24. “I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.” – Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
25. “It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
26. “He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
27. “The half-life of love is forever.” – Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her
28. “Don’t let the muggles get you down.” – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
29. “Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.” – Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
30. “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” – Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
31. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” – Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
32. “When a man really loves a woman, but her feelings towards him are not the same, it’s as if he was reading aloud from the most fascinating book in the world, and she, beside him, is staring blankly at the wall.” – Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love
33. “No one forgets the truth; they just get better at lying.” – Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road
34. “My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.” – John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
35. “To the stars who listen— and the dreams that are answered.” – Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury
36. “I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.” – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
37. “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
38. “I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.” – Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
39. “I am haunted by humans.” – Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
40. “Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you’ve finished just to stay near it.” – Markus Zusak
41. “As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” – John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
42. “You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you.” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
43. “It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.” – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
44. “We are all fools in love.” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
45. “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut
46. “There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.” – Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense
47. “You don’t love someone because they’re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.” – Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper
48. “Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
49. “Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.” – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
50. “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” – Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
51. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” – Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
52. “There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
53. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” – George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
54. “I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
55. “The world was hers for the reading.” – Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
56. “There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.” – Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense
57. “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
58. “The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” – Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
59. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet
60. “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
61. “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
62. “Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.” – John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
63. “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.” – J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
64. “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
65. “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” – Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature
66. “I have been in love with no one, and never shall,” she whispered, “unless it should be with you.” – J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
67. “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.” – Jane Austen, Emma
68. “There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.” – Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark
69. “Love is like the wind, you can’t see it but you can feel it.” – Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember
70. “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.” – Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
71. “It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.” – Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves
72. “Do not go gentle into that good night.” – Dylan Thomas, from his poem, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
73. “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
74. “It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.” – Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
75. “Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.” – Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
76. “Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.” – Khaled Hosseini, And The Mountains Echoed
77. “What’s past is prologue.” – William Shakespeare, The Tempest
78. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
79. “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” – Elie Wiesel, Night
80. “We accept the love we think we deserve.” – Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
81. “I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.” – Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
82. “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
83. “The only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself.” – Tony Robbins, Awaken The Giant Within
84. “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” – Eden Ahbez, Nature Boy
85. “The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.” – J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
86. “It’s no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then.” – Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
87. “Reality continues to ruin my life.” – Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
88. “We read to know we’re not alone.” – William Nicholson, Shadowlands
89. “Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of Earth, overlaying our hard hearts.” – Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
90. “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
91. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin
92. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” – Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
93. “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
94. “Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.” – Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
95. “For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you.” – Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
96. “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” – Neil Gaiman, Coraline
97. “That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” – Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
98. “Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home.
99. “In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds but into my own.” – Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life
100. “A good book is an event in my life.” – Stendhal, The Red and the Black
101. “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey
102. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
103. “One must be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” – Cassandra Clare, The Infernal Devices
104. “To read is to voyage through time.” – Carl Sagan, Cosmos
105. “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
106. “A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” – William Styron, Conversations with William Styron
107. “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
108. “Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.” – Louis L’Amour, Matagorda/The First Fast Draw
109. “It is not true we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.” – S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action
110. “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” – Charles William Eliot, The Happy Life
111. “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” – Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors
112. “Reading brings us unknown friends” – Honoré de Balzac, Louis Lambert
113. “In the end, we’ll all become stories.” – Margaret Atwood, Moral Disorder and Other Stories
114. “All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.” – Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
115. “Endings are the saddest part, So just give me a happy middle And a very happy start.” – Shel Silverstein, Every Thing on It
116. “A book is a device to ignite the imagination.” – Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
117. “Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.” – Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book
118. “Books are the mirrors of the soul.” – Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts
119. “Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden
120. “Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.” – Christopher Paolini, Eragon
121. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
122. “The pieces I am, she gathered them and gave them back to me in all the right order.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
123. “You have bewitched me body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you.” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
124. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” – Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
125. “I am no bird, and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” – Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
126. “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
127. “We loved with a love that was more than love.” – Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee
128. “There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.” – Bram Stoker, Dracula
129. “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” – J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
130. “Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect.” – Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
131. “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
132. “To the stars who listen—and the dreams that are answered.” – Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury
133. “Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” – Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
134. “And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
135. “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
136. “People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
137. “Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.” – Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
138. “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” – William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well
139. “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” – J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
140. “Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.” – George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
141. “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” – Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
142. “Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.” – Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
143. “Life is a book and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read.” – Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess
144. “Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.” – Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard
145. “Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.” – Jane Yolen, Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood
146. “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” – W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You
147. “Books break the shackles of time – proof that humans can work magic.” – Carl Sagan, Cosmos
148. “A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.” – David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Level Up Learning: The Top 39 Coding Games For Kids