Novelist Quotes

Victor Hugo

Jules Verne

Jane Austen

J. K. Rowling

Agatha Christie

Rudyard Kipling

Alexandre Dumas

The story of civilization is, in a sense, the story of engineering-that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of nature work for man's good.

L. Sprague de Camp

The distance between the earth and her satellite is a mere trifle, and undeserving of serious consideration. I am convinced that before twenty years are over one-half of our earth will have paid a visit to the moon.

The physician has a sacred mission on earth; and to fulfill it he begins at the source of life, and goes down to the mysterious darkness of the tomb.

Alexandre Dumas

A persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.

Nothing now remains for us seven but to go back to Stable Hill, proclaim the truth, and take the adventure that Aslan sends us.

I am naturally taciturn, and became a silent and attentive listener.

William Hamilton Maxwell

To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious.

Agatha Christie

If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

Mickey Spillane

Expecting to be able to get rid of the competitive drive, first of all, flies in the face of human nature — and little girls certainly have this drive, as much as little boys do, or at least the little girls I have observed in my immediate family have it.

It is better to waste one's youth than to do nothing with it at all.

Georges Courteline

We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later.

There are times when Science does not satisfy.

Rudyard Kipling

Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.

When debts are not paid because they cannot be paid, the best thing to do is not talk about them, and shuffle the cards again.

Camilo José Cela

One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

G. K. Chesterton

To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

You take a number of small steps which you believe are right, thinking maybe tomorrow somebody will treat this as a dangerous provocation. And then you wait. If there is no reaction, you take another step: courage is only an accumulation of small steps.

György Konrád

So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.

The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers.

I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp, gaunt names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.

Stephen Vincent Benét

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sometimes I think that Darwin made a mistake and that in fact man is descended from the pig, because eight out of every ten members of the human race are swine, and as crooked as a hog's tail.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

None but the estimable shall hear from me that I esteem them. The whole world is entitled to my courtesy, but greater tribute than that must be earned through virtuous acts.

Sophie von La Roche

My writing about Cuba [is] more like an act of creation. Whatever my Cuba is about, it's my own version. I'm not a cultural anthropologist.

Sunday, that day so tedious to the triflers of earth, so full of beautiful reposes of calmness and strength for the earnest and heavenly minded.

Maria Jane McIntosh