20 Most Iconic Book Quotes

1. “If it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”
   — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

2. “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.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road

3. “What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?”
— Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

4. “I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

5. “Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars.”
— J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

6. “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
— Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

7. “We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.”
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

8. “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden

9. “You are your best thing.”
— Toni Morrison, Beloved

10. “Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around.”
— Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

11. “And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

12. “Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.”
— William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

13.“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
— Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

14. “Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

15. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: 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

16. “Love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is acquired with difficulty, it is dearly bought.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

17. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
— Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

18. “Be worthy of love and love will come.”
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

19. “Be worthy of love and love will come.”
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

20. “If it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina