Discover literary quotes from books that linger in your heart, speak to your soul, and feel like they were written just for you.
I have this terrible habit of attacking books with colored markers.
By the time I finish reading, the poor book looks like a colorful battlefield of underlines, stars, and squiggly lines, like a toddler got hold of it during arts and crafts hour.
It’s not just books, either; my phone is drowning in snippets and quotes I’ve saved. And no, it doesn’t matter how much cloud space I buy; my phone still flashes “storage full” like it’s judging me.
It’s the way I roll. I mean, it’s too much. I know that.
But then again, how do you walk away from a sentence that feels like it was written just for you?
The one that makes you stop… reread… and let out a little sigh because… wow.
The one that hits you square in the heart.
The one that whispers exactly what you need to hear.
The one that shouts a truth you didn’t know you’d been avoiding.
The one that’s painfully beautiful to ever let go.
Yes, I hoard those literary gems, scribble them in a notebook, snap photos of them, and tell anyone who’d listen, “You need to read this line!”
I’m the kind who believes literature is love and words are life.
If you’re someone crazy like me, whose books are a rainbow of underlines and sticky notes, and whose phone is forever one quote away from running out of storage, welcome to your happy place.
Most Famous Or Classic Literary Quotes from Books
So it goes… ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
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
I love her and that’s the beginning and end of everything. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
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
And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. ~ William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. ~ A.A. Milne, Disney’s Pooh’s Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin
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
Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
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
If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. ~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
It was a pleasure to burn. ~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
We’re all damaged, somehow. ~ Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty
Marley was dead as a doornail. ~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
I would always rather be happy than dignified. ~ Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
People are their most beautiful when they are laughing, crying, dancing, playing, telling the truth, and being chased in a fun way. ~ Amy Poehler, Yes Please
And may the odds be ever in your favor. ~ Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
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
It is dreadful that one cannot tear out the past by the roots. We cannot tear it out but we can hide the memory of it. ~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
My dear, I don’t give a damn. ~ Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents, grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. ~ Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream. ~ Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
I celebrate myself, and sing myself. ~ Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
All this happened, more or less. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. ~ Samuel Beckett, Murphy
Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody. ~ J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
How wild it was, to let it be. ~ Cheryl Strayed, Wild
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. ~ George Orwell, 1984
One day I will find the right words, and they all will be simple. ~ Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
To define is to limit. ~ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Do I dare / Disturb the universe? ~ T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
There are years that ask questions and years that answer. ~ Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Best Literary Quotes About Life
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. ~ J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. ~ Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
I guess you can’t fight nature. We are what we are. ~ Dev Petty, I Don’t Want to Be a Frog
You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present. ~ John Green, Looking for Alaska
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
It’s funny. All one has to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to. ~ J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. ~ John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant. ~ Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
You can’t skip chapters, that’s not how life works. You have to read every line, meet every character. You won’t enjoy all of it. Hell, some chapters will make you cry for weeks. You will read things you don’t want to read, you will have moments when you don’t want the pages to end. But you have to keep going. Stories keep the world revolving. Live yours, don’t miss out. ~ Courtney Peppernell, Healing the Heart
I think you can sort of slip out of your life and it can be hard to find a way back in. ~ Jandy Nelson, I’ll Give You the Sun
Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything. ~ Sally Rooney, Normal People
People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for. ~ Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Time moves slowly, but passes quickly. ~ Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge. ~ Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere. ~ Elie Wiesel, Night
I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night. ~ Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered. ~ Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
What keeps you going isn’t some fine destination but just the road you’re on, and the fact that you know how to drive. ~ Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
We all can dance when we find music that we love. ~ Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees, Giraffes Can’t Dance
‘Nobody run off with her,’ Roscoe said. ‘She just run off with herself, I guess.’ ~ Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
And in that moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came. ~ Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms
The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them. ~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not. ~ Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
Time is the longest distance between two places. ~ Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
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
It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live. ~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? ~ Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
The world may be mean, but people don’t have to be, not if they refuse. ~ Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad
Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves. ~ Patti Smith, Just Kids
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
You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. ~ Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be. ~ Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
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
There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm. ~ Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. ~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Get busy living or get busy dying. ~ Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go! ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
We don’t have time, Nephew, time has us. It holds us in its mouth like an owl holds a field mouse. ~ Tommy Orange, There There
It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then. ~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape. ~ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child — What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end. ~ Michelle Obama, Becoming
Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between. ~ Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Oh, the places you’ll go! You’ll be on your way up! You’ll be seeing great sights! You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights. ~ Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go
The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything. ~ Isabel Allende, City of the Beasts
Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever. ~ Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
Sometimes you have to keep on steppin’. ~ Christopher Paul Curtis, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963
The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42. ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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
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
The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places. ~ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. ~ Marcus Aurelius
On the night you were born, the moon smiled with such wonder that the stars peeked in to see you and the night wind whispered, ‘Life will never be the same.’ ~ Nancy Tillman, On the Night You Were Born
How should a person be? For years and years I asked it of everyone I met. I was always watching to see what they were going to do in any situation, so I could do it too. I was always listening to their answers, so if I liked them, I could make them my answers too. I noticed the way people dressed, the way they treated their lovers—in everyone, there was something to envy. You can admire anyone for being themselves. ~ Sheila Heti, How Should A Person Be?
Wisdom Quotes from Literature
My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. ~ Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
I don’t understand it any more than you do, but one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t have to understand things for them to be. ~ Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
What is the point of worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one’s life took? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
I think that maybe forgiveness is like change—it comes in small steps. ~ Mary E. Pearson, The Adoration of Jenna Fox
Never hurry and never worry! ~ E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive. ~ John Green, Looking for Alaska
The only way we will survive is by being kind. The only way we can get by in this world is through the help we receive from others. No one can do it alone, no matter how great the machines are. ~ Amy Poehler, Yes Please
Things were rough all over but it was better that way. That way, you could tell the other guy was human too. ~ S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
When I visit the past now, it is for wisdom and experience, not for regret or shame… The last thing we run out of is future. ~ Michael J. Fox, No Time Like the Future
The real things haven’t changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures, and have courage when things go wrong. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie
That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt. ~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Though sympathy alone can’t alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable. ~ Bram Stoker, Dracula
It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories. ~ W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful what we pretend to be. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
What’s so wrong with effort, anyway? It means you care. ~ Mindy Kaling, Why Not Me?
Don’t try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition. ~ Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance. ~ David Nicholls, One Day
You can’t expect everyone to have the same dedication as you. ~ Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up. ~ Philip Roth, The Dying Animal
What are men to rocks and mountains? ~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
How much good inside a day? Depends on how good you live ’em. How much love is inside a friend? Depends on how much you give ’em. ~ Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic
If the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. ~ John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
You never really know how far a smile can go. When one comes your way, it may have traveled thousands of miles and cheered millions of people before it reached you. ~ Patrice Karst, The Smile That Went Around the World
Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly. ~ Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed
Best Literary Quotes About Love & Connection
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
Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost. ~ Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
There is always something left to love. ~ Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Be worthy of love and love will come. ~ Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed. ~ Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby
Remember, what is given from the heart reaches the heart. ~ Patricia C. McKissack, What Is Given From the Heart
Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all. ~ Toni Morrison, Beloved
If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don’t be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning ‘Good morning’ at total strangers. ~ Maya Angelou
There’s sickness, and there’s sadness. But the thing is, there’s love, too. I try never to forget that. ~ Will Walton, Anything Could Happen
Hey, boo. ~ Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
For you, a thousand times over. ~ Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Always. ~ J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
There are few people whom I really love and still fewer of whom I think well. ~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me. ~ W.H. Auden, The More Loving One
You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes. ~ A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
The half-life of love is forever. ~ Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her
Each time you happen to me all over again. ~ Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
Love is holy because it is like grace – the worthiness of its object is never really what matters. ~ Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
I wonder what it’s like to have that much power over a boy. I don’t think I’d want it; it’s a lot of responsibility to hold a person’s heart in your hands. ~ Jenny Han, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you. ~ Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
People who love each other are always connected by a very special string made of love. Even though you can’t see it with your eyes, you can feel it with your heart and know that you are always connected to everyone you love. ~ Patrice Karst, The Invisible String
We accept the love we think we deserve. ~ Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Like many others before him, Abbott discovers, once married, that marriage is a battle—clinically, a negotiation—over the possession of the Bad Mood. ~ Chris Bachelder, Abbott Awaits
It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. ~ Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
When the day shall come that we do part,” he said softly, and turned to look at me, “if my last words are not ‘I love you’—you’ll ken it was because I didn’t have time. ~ Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. ~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
He’s more myself than I am. ~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Journeys end in lovers meeting. ~ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
I love you right up to the moon and back. ~ Sam McBratney, Guess How Much I Love You
Just like a murderer jumps out of nowhere in an alley, love jumped out in front of us and struck us both at once. ~ Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world. ~ Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
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
So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane. ~ John Green, Looking for Alaska
Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering. ~ Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. ~ J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you. ~ Roald Dahl, The Witches
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
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
You can’t pick out the pieces and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that’s the blessing. ~ Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
Maybe we fall in love with sad eyes because we see our souls reflected in them. ~ Bridgett Devoue, Soft Thorns
The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order. ~ Toni Morrison, Beloved
It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes. ~ Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Sometimes it’s like people are a million times more beautiful to you in your mind. It’s like you see them through a special lens — but maybe if it’s how you see them, that’s how they really are. It’s like the whole tree falling in the forest thing. ~ Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty
Best Literary Quotes About Hope
There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
Tomorrow I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day. ~ Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart. ~ Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank
All human wisdom is summed up in these two words – ‘Wait and hope.’ ~ Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
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
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
Best Literary Quotes About Courage & Resilience
The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe. ~ Christopher Paolini, Eragon
Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you go on even though you’re scared. ~ Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give
Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient. ~ Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
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
If you don’t try at anything you can’t fail… it takes backbone to lead the life you want. ~ Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. ~ Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Becoming fearless isn’t the point. That’s impossible. It’s learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it. ~ Veronica Roth, Divergent
Dear God, she prayed, ‘let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.’ ~ Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Courage does not always roar. Valor does not always shine. ~ Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Blood and Bone
Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. ~ Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Who knows, my friend? Maybe the sword does have some magic. Personally, I think it’s the warrior who wields it. ~ Brian Jacques, Redwall
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. ~ Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing. ~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
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
I have a theory that selflessness and bravery aren’t all that different. ~ Veronica Roth, Divergent
‘You have plenty of courage, I am sure,’ answered Oz. ‘All you need is confidence in yourself. There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty.’ ~ L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be. ~ Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give
Anything worth dying for is certainly worth living for. ~ Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Things were different once. Only a string of chance events created the unjust world we know today. If we act wisely, we can change that world, and create a much better one. ~ Y.N Harari, Homo Deus
If you have the guts to be yourself, other people’ll pay your price. ~ John Updike, Rabbit, Run
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
Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy. ~ William Golding, Lord of the Flies
Best Literary Quotes About Strength & Identity
Saying yes doesn’t mean I don’t know how to say no, and saying please doesn’t mean I am waiting for permission… ‘Yes, please’ sounds powerful and concise. It’s not about being a ‘good girl.’ It’s about being a real woman. ~ Amy Poehler, Yes Please
Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle. ~ Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
But you know, happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light. ~ J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
‘He’s the strongest man in the world.’ ‘Man, yes,’ said Pippi, ‘but I am the strongest girl in the world, remember that.’ ~ Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking
And that’s all we are Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood. Until we—each of us, individually—decide to become something else. I am still that piece of drifting wood, and those out there are no better. But you can be better. ~ Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying
People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven’t you? ~ L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
Find your own way, you don’t have to follow the crowd. There’s only one you in this great big world. ~ Linda Kranz, Only One You
Daddy tells me it is beautiful. That makes me proud. I love that my hair lets me be me! ~ Matthew A. Cherry, Hair Love
Best Literary Quotes About Friendship
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
Frog said, ‘I wrote “Dear Toad, I am glad that you are my best friend. Your best friend, Frog.”’ ‘Oh,’ said Toad, ‘that makes a very good letter.’ Then Frog and Toad went out onto the front porch to wait for the mail. They sat there, feeling happy together. ~ Arnold Lobel, Frog and Toad Are Friends
Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold. ~ S. E. Hinton, The Outsiders
You may be born into a family, but you walk into friendships. Some you’ll discover you should put behind you. Others are worth every risk. ~ Adam Silvera, They Both Die at the End
Best Literary Quotes About Memories
Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart. ~ Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
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
You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget. ~ Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Best Literary Quotes About Truth and Freedom
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
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. ~ George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. ~ Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited
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
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
You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty. ~ Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Best Literary Quotes About Dreams, Imagination, & Creativity
We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Dreams are hopeful because they exist as pure possibility. Unlike memories, which are fossils, long dead and buried deep. ~ Shaun David Hutchinson, We Are the Ants
Well, maybe it started that way. As a dream, but doesn’t everything? Those buildings. These lights. This whole city. Somebody had to dream about it first. And maybe that is what I did. I dreamed about coming here, but then I did it. ~ Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~ Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
But then I realized, what do they really know? This is MY idea, I thought. No one knows it like I do. And it’s okay if it’s different and weird, and maybe a little crazy. ~ Kobi Yamada, What Do You Do With an Idea?
Listen to the MUSTN’TS, child. Listen to the DON’TS. Listen to the SHOULDN’TS, the IMPOSSIBLES, the WONT’S. Listen to the NEVER HAVES. Then listen close to me—Anything can happen, child, ANYTHING can be. ~ Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends
All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust. ~ J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven’t started wondering about yet. ~ Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach
Just think happy thoughts and you’ll fly. ~ J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
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
So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible. ~ Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
A little drop of paint lets your imagination run wild. A smudge and a smear can make magic appear. ~ Barney Saltzberg, Beautiful Oops!
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. ~ Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. ~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Why, sometimes, I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ~ Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it. ~ J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
It’s very hard to have ideas. It’s very hard to put yourself out there, it’s very hard to be vulnerable, but those people who do that are the dreamers, the thinkers and the creators. They are the magic people of the world. ~ Amy Poehler, Yes Please
Inspirational Positive Quotes in Literature
Not trying is much worse than failing. ~ Esther Pia Cordova, A World Without Failures
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
~ William Ernest Henley, Invictus
You know it don’t take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin, Laura. But who in hell ever got himself out of one without removing one nail? ~ Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet. ~ Stephen King, The Stand
Today was a difficult day. Tomorrow will be better. ~ Kevin Henkes, Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse
There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights. ~ Bram Stoker, Dracula
You’re great no matter what! You are worthwhile simply because you’re alive. Never forget this, and you’re sure to thrive. ~ Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, Unstoppable Me!
He was dancing, dancing. He says he’ll never die. ~ Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
We who have means and a voice must use them to help those who have neither. ~ Jennifer Donnelly, These Shallow Graves
Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always try to be a little kinder than is necessary? ~ J.M. Barrie, The Little White Bird
Inside all of us is Hope. Inside all of us is Fear. Inside all of us is Adventure. Inside all of us is … A Wild Thing. ~ Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are
Don’t waste your energy trying to change opinions. … Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it. ~ Tina Fey, Bossypants
Three-fourths of the people you will ever meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you. ~ Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
Literary Quotes About Reflection
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
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
I try to think about how it all works. At school dances, I sit in the background, and I tap my toe, and I wonder how many couples will dance to ‘their song.’ In the hallways, I see the girls wearing the guys’ jackets, and I think about the idea of property. And I wonder if anyone is really happy. I hope they are. I really hope they are. ~ Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple child’s play. ~ Herman Melville, Moby Dick
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. ~ L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between
I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people—to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it’s the effect or vice versa. ~ Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall
Out there, under the stars, I really tried to focus on myself and what I needed. I took walks, I read books, I floated in the river, I wrote in my journal and found simple moments to be quiet. ~ Jory John, The Good Egg
History has failed us, but no matter. ~ Min Jin Lee, Pachinko
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. ~ Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
We all have the same beginning – birth – and we all have the same end – death. So how different can we be? ~ Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
I spent much of my childhood listening to the sound of striving. ~ Michelle Obama, Becoming
I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark. ~ Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. ~ John Steinbeck, East of Eden
I feel like everyone fakes who they really are, when deep down we’re all equal amounts of screwed up. Some of us are just better at hiding it than others. ~ Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us
The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane’s heart. ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell, Once Upon a River
My suffering left me sad and gloomy. ~ Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Poetic Literary Quotes in Books
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. ~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. ~ W.B. Yeats, Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
The curves of your lips rewrite history. ~ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly. ~ Langston Hughes, The Big Sea
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. ~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet
She was lost in her longing to understand. ~ Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change. ~ Maya Angelou, On the Pulse of Morning
A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it. ~ Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
At the still point, there the dance is. ~ T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together. ~ J.D. Salinger, A Girl I Knew
All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths. ~ Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
Best Quotes from Literature About Human Nature
How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
All we can know is that we know nothing. And that’s the height of human wisdom. ~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. ~ Toni Morrison, Beloved
I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. ~ John Steinbeck, East of Eden
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved. ~ Jack Kerouac, On the Road
We had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it. ~ Ann Patchett, The Dutch House
Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row. ~ J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
What does the brain matter compared with the heart? ~ Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. ~ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey
He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart. ~ Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
I think now that if I had had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home. ~ James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
Best Quotes from Books About Women
It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment’s carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did. ~ Madeline Miller, Circe
Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for. ~ Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Quotes in Literature About Family & Home
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful. ~ Roald Dahl, Matilda
Passion is… it’s fire. And fire is great, man. But we’re made of water. Water is how we keep living. Water is what we need to survive. My family was my water. I picked water. I’ll pick water every time. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six
Setting out on an adventure is thrilling, but coming home is even better. ~ Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are
When Harry thought about Winnie and the voyage across the ocean, his head said, ‘I shouldn’t.’ His head said, ‘I can’t.’ But his heart made up his mind. ~ Lindsay Mattick, Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear
Best Literary Quotes About Happiness & Joy
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
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
It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that is the secret of happiness. ~ J.M. Barrie, The Annotated Peter Pan
I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It’s nice. ~ J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
The teacher taught me the word in school. I wrote it in my book. B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L. Beautiful! I think it means something that when you have it, your heart is happy. ~ Sharon Dennis Wyeth, Something Beautiful
Best Quotes in Literature About Humor & Wit
I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled. ~ P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters
What fresh hell is this? ~ Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one-hundred percent! ~ Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg
Heart like shale. What you need is a good fracking. ~ Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam
Everything’s profound when there’s guns and zombies. ~ Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim
If this typewriter can’t do it, then f@#$ it, it can’t be done. ~ Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor. ~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Best Literary Quotes About Being Yourself
No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. ~ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Normal is whatever you are. ~ Stephen Cosgrove, Leo the Lop
Be who you are and say how you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind. ~ Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat
She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world. ~ Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Best Literary Quotes About Words, Books, Stories, & Writing
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. ~ Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
Books are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them. ~ Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me
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
Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story. ~ Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
THE BEST word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. ~ Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Books have to be heavy because the whole world’s inside them. ~ Cornelia Funke, Inkheart
A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. ~ Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
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
That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. ~ Anthony Trollope, Autobiography of Anthony Trollope
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. ~ Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy… I am just trying — trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself. ~ Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
One must be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us. ~ Cassandra Clare, The Infernal Devices
Literary Quotes About Gratitude
Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot. ~ Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Finally the Rainbow Fish has only one shining scale left. His most prized possessions had been given away, yet he was very happy. ~ Marcus Pfister, The Rainbow Fish
Thank you for the sun above, thank you for my friends I love, thank you for the earth and air, thank you for the food to share. ~ Dallas Clayton, An Awesome Book of Thanks
So, there you have it, some of the most beautiful sentences in Literature, the kind that inspires, comforts, or shakes us awake.
These literary quotes don’t just belong to the stories they came from; they belong to us now. They’re the little echoes we carry in our hearts, the scribbles in the margins of our lives, and the reminders that somewhere, some writer understood exactly how we feel.
Keep marking up those pages. Keep saving those snippets. Because the best words don’t stay locked in books, they live on in you.
Note: I found the image used in this pin while browsing Pinterest, and it was too aesthetically pleasing to pass up. It’s been shared like wildfire by random accounts, so I couldn’t track down the original creator. If it’s yours, let me know—I’d love to give you the credit you so beautifully deserve.
Pin It Before You Lose These Literary Gems to Memory
