Literature Quotes
Your favorite quotes from your favorite books.
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Looking for love? We can't help you. But we do have loads of literature quotes. Hopefully that does the trick. Click on any quote below to see it in context and find out where it falls on Shmoop's pretentious scale. We'll give you details on who wrote it, when they wrote it, and in some cases, why on earth they thought it was okay to write it.
For more literature quotes, head on over to our Literature or Bestsellers sections, choose a book, and click Quotes in the navigation.
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"And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower | Author: Stephen Chbosky
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"And in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came."Source: Other Voices, Other Rooms | Author: Truman Capote
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"Anything worth dying for...is certainly worth living for."Source: Catch-22 | Author: Joseph Heller
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"As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."Source: Gone with the Wind | Author: Margaret Mitchell
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"Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly."Source: And the Mountains Echoed | Author: Khaled Hosseini
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"Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are."Source: The Alchemist | Author: Paulo Coelho
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"But you just gotta understand that that’s the way it is and keep on steppin'."Source: The Watsons Go to Birmingham | Author: Christopher Paul Curtis
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"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents"Source: Little Women | Author: Louisa May Alcott
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"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."Source: Coraline | Author: Neil Gaiman & G.K. Chesterton
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"For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing."Source: The Plague | Author: Albert Camus
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"He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling."Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
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"I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man."Source: Notes from the Underground | Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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"I can still tend the rabbits, George? I didn't mean no harm, George."Source: Of Mice and Men | Author: John Steinbeck
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"I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing."Source: Moby-Dick | Author: Herman Melville
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"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul | Author: Douglas Adams
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"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good"Source: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | Author: J.K. Rowling
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"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."Source: The Hotel New Hampshire | Author: John Irving
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"If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price."Source: Rabbit, Run | Author: John Updike
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"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."Source: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone | Author: J. K. Rowling
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"It's better to look at the sky than live there."Source: Breakfast at Tiffany's | Author: Truman Capote
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"Life is pain. Anybody that says different is selling something."Source: The Princess Bride | Author: William Goldman
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"Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything."Source: A Wrinkle in Time | Author: Madeleine L'Engle
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"One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them."Source: Brave New World | Author: Aldous Huxley
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"Some infinities are bigger than other infinities."Source: The Fault in Our Stars | Author: John Green
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"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience."Source: Dune | Author: Frank Herbert
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"The officer nodded, as if a question had been answered."Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
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"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."Source: On the Road | Author: Jack Kerouac
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"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."Source: Diggers (The Bromeliad Trilogy) | Author: Terry Pratchett
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"The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away."Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
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"There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind."Source: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater | Author: Kurt Vonnegut
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"We accept the love we think we deserve."Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower | Author: Stephen Chbosky
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"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful what we pretend to be."Source: Mother Night | Author: Kurt Vonnegut
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"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."Source: Seduction of the Minotaur | Author: Anaïs Nin
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"We just got to go on, that's all. That's what grownups would do."Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
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"What a treacherous thing to believe a person is more than a person."Source: Paper Towns | Author: John Green
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"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."Source: No Country for Old Men | Author: Cormac McCarthy