Novel

Explore 898 quotes from the following medium: Novel

What a misfortune it is to be born a woman!... Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible; to show us the narrow limits, the Gothic structure, the impenetrable barriers of our prison.

Maria Edgeworth

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Topic

Oppression of women Women

Author

Maria Edgeworth

Source

Leonora

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1806 1800s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Edgeworth, Maria. Leonora. London: J. Johnson, 1806, letter 1.

Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Julian Barnes

The Sense of an Ending

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Topic

Purpose of life The human condition

Author

Julian Barnes

Source

The Sense of an Ending

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

2011 2010s 21st century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Barnes, Julian. The Sense of an Ending. Jonathan Cape/Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, ch. 2.

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

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Topic

Origin of the universe Beginning of time Creation of the world The universe

Author

Douglas Adams

Source

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Medium

Radio broadcast Novel

Genre

Science fiction

Statement Type

Opening lines Joke

Language

English

Time

1978 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Adams, Douglas. "Fit the Fifth." The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Primary Phase. BBC Radio 4, London, England, UK, 5 Apr. 1978.

Current Citation

Adams, Douglas. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Pan Books, 1980, ch. 1.

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Susan Ertz

More information about this quote

Topic

Spending time Rainy days Sunday Eternal life

Author

Susan Ertz

Source

Anger in the Sky

Medium

Novel

Statement Type

Paradox

Language

English

Time

1943 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Ertz, Susan. Anger in the Sky. Harper & Brothers/Hodder & Stoughton, 1943.

What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss.

Umberto Eco

The Name of the Rose

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Topic

Dangers of love Nature of love Love

Author

Umberto Eco

Source

The Name of the Rose

Medium

Novel

Language

Italian

Time

1980 1980s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Eco, Umberto. Il nome della rosa [The Name of the Rose]. Bompiani, 1980.

Current Citation

Eco, Humberto. The Name of the Rose, translated by William Weaver. HarperVia, 2014.

Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.

Margaret Drabble

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Topic

Feeling seen Connecting with others

Author

Margaret Drabble

Source

A Summer Bird-Cage

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1963 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Drabble, Margaret. A Summer Bird-Cage. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963, ch. 7.

A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life, to be thankful for a good one.

Marjorie Rawlings

The Yearling

More information about this quote

Topic

Men and women

Speaker

Grandma Hutto

Author

Marjorie Rawlings

Source

The Yearling

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1938 1930s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Rawlings, Marjorie. The Yearling. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938, ch. 12.

She knew how to allure by denying, and to make the gift rich by delaying it.

Anthony Trollope

More information about this quote

Topic

Delayed gratification Pursuing women Courtship and dating

Author

Anthony Trollope

Source

Phineas Finn

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1867 1860s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Trollope, Anthony. "Phineas Finn." St Paul's Magazine, Oct. 1867-May 1868. Monthly serial.

Current Citation

Trollope, Anthony. Phineas Finn. Oxford University Press, 2011, ch. 57.

Some say that no one ever leaves Montreal, for that city, like Canada itself, is designed to preserve the past, a past that happened somewhere else.

Leonard Cohen

The Favourite Game

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Topic

Montreal Canada

Author

Leonard Cohen

Source

The Favourite Game

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1963 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Cohen, Leonard. The Favourite Game. Secker and Warburg, 1963, bk. 2, ch. 19.

The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.

Cormac McCarthy

Blood Meridian; or The Evening Redness in the West

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Topic

The world

Author

Cormac McCarthy

Source

Blood Meridian; or The Evening Redness in the West

Medium

Novel

Genre

Western literature

Language

English

Time

1985 1980s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian; or The Evening Redness in the West. Random House, 1985, ch. 17.

Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women.

Charles R. Johnson

Middle Passage

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More information about this quote

Topic

Dangers of women Ocean and sea

Author

Charles R. Johnson

Source

Middle Passage

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1990 1990s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Johnson, Charles R. Middle Passage. Atheneum Publishers, 1990.

The first ten million years were the worst. And the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.

Douglas Adams

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

More information about this quote

Topic

Adversity

Speaker

Marvin the Paranoid Android

Author

Douglas Adams

Source

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Medium

Radio broadcast Novel

Genre

Science fiction

Statement Type

Irony

Language

English

Time

1978 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Adams, Douglas. "Fit the Fifth." The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Primary Phase. BBC Radio 4, London, England, UK, 5 Apr. 1978.

Current Citation

Adams, Douglas. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Pan Books, 1980, ch. 18.

But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, and can recapture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty of it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties.

Kenneth Grahame

The Wind in the Willows

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Topic

Dreams Waking up

Author

Kenneth Grahame

Source

The Wind in the Willows

Medium

Novel

Genre

Children's literature

Language

English

Time

1908 1900s 20th century

Authentication Score 2

Original Citation

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. Methuen, 1908.

Current Citation

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. Barnes & Noble, 2013.

We live in time—it holds us and molds us—but I've never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing—until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.

Julian Barnes

The Sense of an Ending

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Topic

Nature of time Time

Author

Julian Barnes

Source

The Sense of an Ending

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

2011 2010s 21st century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Barnes, Julian. The Sense of an Ending. Jonathan Cape/Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, ch. 1.

Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.

Thomas Love Peacock

More information about this quote

Topic

Marriage Single life

Speaker

Sir Telegraph Paxarett

Author

Thomas Love Peacock

Source

Melincourt

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1817 1810s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Peacock, Thomas Love. Melincourt. London: T. Hookham, and Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1817, ch. 7.

Current Citation

Peacock, Thomas Love. Melincourt, edited by Gary Dyer. Cambridge University Press, 2022, ch. 7.

One never reaches home... But wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

Hermann Hesse

Demian

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More information about this quote

Topic

Home

Speaker

Frau Eva

Author

Hermann Hesse

Source

Demian

Medium

Novel

Genre

Coming of age story

Language

German

Time

1919 1910s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Hesse, Herman. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend [Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth]. Fischer Verlag, 1919.

Current Citation

Hesse, Herman. Demian, translated by Damion Searls. Penguin Classics, 2013.

Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

Haruki Murakami

Sputnik Sweetheart

More information about this quote

Topic

Loneliness Isolation The human condition

Author

Haruki Murakami

Source

Sputnik Sweetheart

Medium

Novel

Statement Type

Question

Language

Japanese

Time

1999 1990s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Murakami, Haruki. スプートニクの恋人 [Sputnik Sweetheart]. Kodansha, 1999.

It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature-neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possiblities.

Thomas Hardy

The Return of the Native

A description of Egdon Heath, a fictional place in southeast England.

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Topic

Landscape England

Author

Thomas Hardy

Source

The Return of the Native

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1878 1870s 19th century

Authentication Score 2

Original Citation

Hardy, Thomas. "The Return of the Native." Belgravia, 9 Jan. 1878 - 19 Dec. 1878.

Current Citation

Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native, edited by Simon Gatrell. Oxford University Press, 2009.

And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight—isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've experienced before? You see things more clearly and you know that you're seeing them more clearly. And it comes to you that this is what it means to love life, this is all anybody who talks seriously about God is ever talking about. Moments like this.

Jonathan Franzen

The Corrections

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More information about this quote

Topic

Inflection points

Author

Jonathan Franzen

Source

The Corrections

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

2001 2000s 21st century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Franzen, Jonathan. The Corrections. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

The trouble
with being best man is, you don't get a chance
to prove it.

Les A. Murray

More information about this quote

Topic

Best man Weddings

Author

Les A. Murray

Source

The Boys Who Stole the Funeral

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1989 1980s 20th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Murray, Les A. The Boys Who Stole the Funeral: A Novel Sequence. Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1980.