Top 100 Famous Book Quotes

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Reading books is great to open up your mind and imagination. In fact, many of the most published books as well as some of the funniest novels have great quotes that can help you see the world in a different way. With that in mind, check out below for the top 100 famous book quotes.

#100 – 90. Famous Book Quotes

#100. It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. – Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

#99. If you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all. – John Green, Paper Towns

#98. It is a great misfortune to be alone, my friends; and it must be believed that solitude can quickly destroy reason. – Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island

#97. I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will. – Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

#96. Most people are nice when you finally see them. – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

#95. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost. – Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

#94. Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart. – Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

#93. Not all those who wander are lost. – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

#92. Seek freedom and become captive of your desires, seek discipline and find your liberty. – Frank Herbert, Dune

#91. You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit. – Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

#90. None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are. – Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

#89 – 80. Famous Book Quotes

#89. We can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. – George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

#88. 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

#87. Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another). – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

#86. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

#85. I was told love should be unconditional. That’s the rule, everyone says so. But if love has no boundaries, no limits, no conditions, why should anyone try to do the right thing ever? If I know I am loved no matter what, where is the challenge? – Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

#84. You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget. – Cormac McCarthy, The Road

#83. Anything worth dying for is certainly worth living for. – Joseph Heller, Catch-22

#82. The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. – J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly. – Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed

#81. The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair. – Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company

#80. Travel far enough, you meet yourself. – David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

#79 – 70. Famous Book Quotes

#79. Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever. – Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannnot See

#78. Nothing that’s worthwhile is ever easy. – Nicholas Sparks, Message in a Bottle

#77. And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. – John Steinbeck, East of Eden

#76. If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives. – Lemony Snicket, The Ersatz Elevator

#75. My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. –  Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

#74. Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. – Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

#73. To define is to limit. – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

#72. I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. – Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

#71. It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

#70. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. – Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

#69 – 60. Famous Book Quotes

#69. Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest. Except when you don’t. Because, sometimes, you won’t. I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you. – Dr. Seuss, Oh! The Places You’ll Go.

#68. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. – Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan

#67. No one forgets the truth; they just get better at lying. – Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

#66. It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it. – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

#65. The only limits for tomorrow are the doubts we have today. – Pittacus Lore, The Power of Six

#64. Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

#63. Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest. Except when you don’t. Because, sometimes, you won’t. I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you. – Dr. Seuss, Oh! the Places You’ll Go.

#62. Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. – Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

#61. Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet. – L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

#60. Get busy living, or get busy dying. – Stephen King, Different Seasons

#59 – 50. Famous Book Quotes

#59. Of course, it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real? – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

#58. We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing. – Charles Bukowski, The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

#57. If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself. – Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

#56. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. – Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

#55. When someone leaves, it’s because someone else is about to arrive. – Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

#54. It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning. – H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

#53. Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it. – Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

#52. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. – Paulo Coelho, Brida

#51. The past is another country; they do things differently there. – LP Hartley, The Go-Between

#50. Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving. – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

#49 – 40. Famous Book Quotes

#49. The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly. – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

#48. You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. – Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men

#47. No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. – Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

#46. The half life of love is forever. – Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her

#45. When you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while. – Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

#44. Terror made me cruel. – Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

#43. 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

#42. For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are. – C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

#41. Why can’t people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing. – Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier

#40. Who, being loved, is poor? – Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

#39 – 30. Famous Book Quotes

#39. Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. – Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

#38. How wild it was, to let it be. – Cheryl Strayed, Wild

#37. Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. – Marthe Troly-Curtin, Phrynette Married

#36. I would always rather be happy than dignified. – Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

#35. I won’t tell you what to believe, Eragon. It is far better to be taught to think critically and then be allowed to make your own decisions than to have someone else’s notions thrust upon you. – Christopher Paolini, Eldest

#34. All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time. – Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet In Heaven

#33. Human beings need loyalty. It does not necessarily produce happiness, and can even be painful, but we all require devotion to something more than ourselves for our lives to be endurable. Without it, we have only our desires to guide us, and they are fleeting, capricious, and insatiable. – Atul Gawande, Being Mortal

#32. Above all, don’t lie to yourself. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

#31. I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough. – Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

#30. It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. – André Gide, Autumn Leaves

#29 – 20. Famous Book Quotes

#29. In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart. – Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank

#28. Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer. – Dan Brown, Digital Fortress

#27. Adversity is like a strong wind. It…tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be. – Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

#26. Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other. – John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

#25. It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane. – Philip K. Dick, Valis

#24. We accept the love we think we deserve. – Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

#23. It is never too late to be wise. – Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

#22. One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. – Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

#21. You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. – David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

#20. Well-behaved women seldom make history. – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

#19 – 10. Famous Book Quotes

#19. We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy. – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

#18. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. – Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

#17. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you. – Roald Dahl, The Witches

#16. Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise. – Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

#15. It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

#14. 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

#13. So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible. – Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

#12. It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting. – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

#11. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

#10. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. – H.Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You

#9 – 1. Famous Book Quotes

#9. If you’re making mistakes it means you’re out there doing something. – Neil Gaiman, Make Good Art

#8. Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War

#7. You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live. – Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

#6. It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then. – Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

#5. We need never be ashamed of our tears. – Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

#4. I assign myself no rank or any limit, and such an attitude is very much against the trend of the times. But my world has become one of infinite possibilities. – Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

#3. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. – Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

#2. There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers than those of us who are willing to fall because we have learned how to rise. – Brené Brown, Rising Strong

#1. There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for. – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers