The best Book Quotes (Page 20)

It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

But it's well known that repression makes a religion flourish.

Knowing where the trap is - that's the first step in evading it.

The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.

It's easier to be terrified by an enemy you admire.

A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel.

Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known.

Children have to grow into their imaginations like a pair of oversized shoes.

She had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there was nothing physically wrong. She hurt all the time.

Small children are great accepters. They don't understand shame, or the need to hide things.

I think all mothers shine a little, you know, at least until their kids grow up enough to watch out for themselves.

He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out. He would write it because he felt he had to.

But see that you get on. That's your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on.

We sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives.

The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge.

Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.

Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win.

God wiped snot out of his nose and that was you.

How many times, over how many years, had he - a grown man - asked for the mercy of another chance? He was suddenly so sick of himself, so revolted, that he could have groaned aloud.

Could a dead, frozen heart beat again? It felt like mine was about to.

The wast majority of my thoughts revolved around her as though she was the center of my mind's gravity.

She could stay forever and it would not be long enough.

Perhaps romance always seemed a slightly foolish thing to everyone until one actually fell into it.

I was a predator. She was my prey.

She had changed me more than I'd known it was possible for me to change and still remain myself.

My life was an unending, unchanging midnight. It must, by necessity, always be midnight for me. So how was it possible that the sun was rising now, in the middle of my midnight?

I knew her well enough to see that the sight of so many books in one room was something of a dream to her.

Though I hated her, I was absolutely aware that my hatred was unjust. I knew that what I really hated was myself. And I would hate us both so much more when she was dead.

Her heart fluttered; my dead heart felt warmer.

The sky above me was clear, brilliant with stars, glowing blue in some places, yellow in others. The stars created majestic, swirling shapes against the black backdrop of the empty universe.

When you lose your temper, you lose a friend. When you lie, you lose yourself.

Unfairness and injustice are two things that really threaten blind faith.

You cannot wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

When you screw up you own it, you make amends, you learn your lesson.

Crying will release the sorrowful thoughts on the mind.

Leave something for someone but dont leave someone for something.

If you can't look after something in your care, you have no right to keep it.

Hatred is so much easier to win than love - and so much harder to get rid of.

Nothing like having a bucket of cold water flung over you to make you see things as they really are!

I don't know why, but the meals we have on picnics always taste so much nicer than the ones we have indoors.

The best way to treat obstacles is to use them as stepping-stones. Laugh at them, tread on them, and let them lead you to something better.

I'm good at exploring roofs. You never know when that kind of thing comes in useful.

The point is not that I don't recognise bad people when I see them - I grant you I may quite well be taken in by them - the point is that I know a good person when I see one.

"Oh, I wish I lived in a caravan!" said Jimmy longingly. "How lovely it must be to live in a house that has wheels and can go away down the lanes and through the towns, and stand still in fields at night!"

The moon was coming slowly up over the hill in front of them. The countryside was bathed in light, pale and cold and silvery. Everything could be seen quite plainly, and Lotta and Jimmy thought it was just like daytime with the colours missing.

She realized she'd never felt this happy. Even at her old school, she had been an outsider, always the lonely girl, the one who stayed at home watching TV on Saturday nights while her friends went to parties and out on dates.

"Just follow my lead," I said. "It'll be fun."
"Please," Sam begged, "don't let those words be carved on my tombstone."

Sometimes you lie to deceive people. Sometimes you lie because you need the lie to become the truth.

In case you're wondering, Old York looks absolutely nothing like New York. It looks older.
Magnus Chase, master of description. You're welcome.