The best Book Quotes (Page 8)

The best Book Quotes (Page 8)

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If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.
The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.
After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?
The giant, once well buried, now stirs. When soon he rises, as surely he will, the friendly bonds between us will prove as knots young girls make with the stems of small flowers.
Indeed - why should I not admit it? - in that moment, my heart was breaking.
I won the bet but I lost the only thing that has ever made me happy.
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A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.
There's lots of good fish in the sea... maybe... but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea.
Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.
Sex and a cocktail: they both lasted about as long, had the same effect, and amounted to the same thing.
I only want one thing of men, and that is, that they should leave me alone.
It's no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they've got to come. You can't force them.
A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everyone.
What the eye doesn't see and the mind doesn't know, doesn't exist.
Never was an age more sentimental, more devoid of real feeling, more exaggerated in false feeling, than our own.
Me? Oh, intellectually I believe in having a good heart, a chirpy p-nis, a lively intelligence, and the courage to say 'shit!' in front of a lady.
Money is a sort of instinct. It's a sort of property of nature in a man to make money.
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.
Well, as to that, all I'll say is, you can't take out a fellow's heart before he's ready to give it up.
He saw things in a way that others did not, so that a city I had lived in all my life seemed a different place, so that a woman became beautiful with the light on her face.
I did not mind the cold so much when he was there.
You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.
Yes, well, life is a folly. If you live long enough, nothing is surprising.
I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home.
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It was not a house where secrets could be kept easily.
"Well," Lockwood said, "if you judge success by the number of enemies you make, that was a highly successful evening."
Jonathan Stroud in Lockwood & Co. - 2: The Whispering Skull
Dave: "You're not our leader."
Lucy: "No, but I know what I'm doing, which is a nice alternative."
Jonathan Stroud in Lockwood & Co. - 4: The Creeping Shadow
Lockwood: "Never touch a mummified body part if you don't know where it's been. That's my motto."
George: "Holds true with unmummified ones too. That's the motto I live by."
Jonathan Stroud in Lockwood & Co. - 4: The Creeping Shadow
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According to some, heroic deaths are admirable things. I've never been convinced by this argument, mainly because, no matter how cool, stylish, composed, unflappable, manly, or defiant you are, at the end of the day you're also dead. Which is a little too permanent for my liking.
Jonathan Stroud in Bartimaeus Sequence - 3: Ptolemy's Gate
It was Nathaniel's boundless capacity for stating the obvious that made him so charmingly human.
Jonathan Stroud in Bartimaeus Sequence - 3: Ptolemy's Gate
"Really?"
"No. I'm being ironic. Or is it sarcastic? I can never remember."
"Irony's cleverer, so you're probably being sarcastic."
Jonathan Stroud in Lockwood & Co. - 1: The Screaming Staircase
It was a time of beginnings and a time of endings.
Jonathan Stroud in Lockwood & Co. - 5: The Empty Grave
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Stop worrying about the past. The past is for ghosts. We've all done things that we regret. It's what's ahead of us that counts.
Jonathan Stroud in Lockwood & Co. - 1: The Screaming Staircase
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"I warn you," the boy went on. "I am a magician of great power. I control many terrifying entities. This being you see before you" - here I rolled my shoulders back and puffed my chest up menacingly - "is but the meanest and least impressive of my slaves." (Here I slumped my shoulders and stuck my stomach out.)
Jonathan Stroud in Bartimaeus Sequence - 2: The Golem's Eye
Making tea is a ritual that stops the world from falling in on you.
Jonathan Stroud in Lockwood & Co. - 4: The Creeping Shadow
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I wasn't pretty, but as my mother once said, prettiness wasn't my profession.
Jonathan Stroud in Lockwood & Co. - 1: The Screaming Staircase
He was transfixed at the sight of the lords and ladies of his realm running about like demented chickens.
Jonathan Stroud in Bartimaeus Sequence - 1: The Amulet of Samarkand
In my eyes, refusing cake is an immoral act.
Jonathan Stroud in Lockwood & Co. - 4: The Creeping Shadow
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One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror.
Jonathan Stroud in Bartimaeus Sequence - 1: The Amulet of Samarkand
I don't know how old the man was... but he was definitely closer to coffin than crib.
Jonathan Stroud in Lockwood & Co. - 3: The Hollow Boy
Despite his crimped shirts and flowing mane (or perhaps because of them) I had seen no evidence as yet that Nathaniel even knew what a girl was. If he'd ever met one, chances are they'd both have run screaming in opposite directions.
Jonathan Stroud in Bartimaeus Sequence - 2: The Golem's Eye
Ambition is all very well, my lad, but you must cloak it.
Jonathan Stroud in Bartimaeus Sequence - 1: The Amulet of Samarkand
A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.
Jonathan Stroud in Bartimaeus Sequence - 3: Ptolemy's Gate
By now, in his mid to late teens, he might just about have passed for a man. When seen from behind. At a distance. On a very dark night.
Jonathan Stroud in Bartimaeus Sequence - 3: Ptolemy's Gate
And then, as if written by the hand of a bad novelist, an incredible thing happened.
Jonathan Stroud in Bartimaeus Sequence - 1: The Amulet of Samarkand
To my astonishment I saw him standing at a table with Kitty Jones. It was the Kitty Jones bit that was astonishing. Not the table. Though it was very nicely polished.
Jonathan Stroud in Bartimaeus Sequence - 3: Ptolemy's Gate
"Is it just me," Kipps said, "or does that boy need punching?"
"It's not just you."
Jonathan Stroud in Lockwood & Co. - 4: The Creeping Shadow
"Have you a name?"
"A name?" I cried. "I have MANY names! I am Bartimaeus! I am Sakhr al-Jinni! I am N'gorso the Mighty and the Serpent of Silver Plumes!"
I paused dramatically. The young man looked blank. "Nope never heard of you. Now if you'll just-"
Jonathan Stroud in Bartimaeus Sequence - 2: The Golem's Eye
"Looks?" the skull said. "Who cares about that? It's superficial. Outward appearance doesn't interest me at all. Why do you think I hang around with you?" It chuckled. "Insult aside, that's just one way in which I'm superior to every one of you, except for Cubbins."
Jonathan Stroud in Lockwood & Co. - 5: The Empty Grave
"It wasn't the body," he said. "I've seen worse things in our fridge."
Jonathan Stroud in Lockwood & Co. - 2: The Whispering Skull
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