The most powerful literary quotes

The very greatest novels pack sentences so prevailing that you stop reading, lower the book and simply live in the words for a moment. Here are the most powerful sentences in novels, curated by the Viewtale review team.

Of Mice And Men

Author: John Steinbeck

Year: 1937

"Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other."

Invisible Man

Author: Ralph Ellison

Year: 1952

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”

Wuthering Heights

Author: Emily Brontë

Year: 1847

"Terror made me cruel"

L.A. Confidential

Author: James Ellroy

Year: 1990

“Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. You’re in with the former, but my God I don’t envy the blood on your conscience.”

On The Road

Author: Jack Kerouac

Year: 1957

“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.”

1984

Author: George Orwell

Year: 1949

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

The Handmaid's Tale

Author: Margaret Atwood

Year: 1985

"We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories."

The Time Machine

Author: H.G. Wells

Year: 1895

“It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.”

Anna Karenina

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Year: 1877

"It's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it."

Jane Eyre

Author: Charlotte Brontë

Year: 1847

"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs."

The Road

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Year: 2006

“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”

American Psycho

Author: Bret Easton Ellis

Year: 1991

"There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there."

Don Quixote

Author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Year: 1605

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”

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Great lines from world-renowned books

Fans of the classics will love this collection curated by the Viewtale review team.

Do come back and draw the ferrets, they are the most lovely noble darlings in the world. - D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love

Once more it was borne in on him that marriage was not the safe anchorage he had been taught to think, but an uncharted voyage on the seas. - Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

Time is the River on which the leaves of our thoughts are carried into oblivion. - Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

I told Terry I was leaving. She had been thinking about it all night and was resigned to it. Emotionlessly she kissed me in the vineyard and walked off down the row. We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time. - Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Babies, babies, babies. Why did God make so many babies? But no, God didn’t make them. Stupid people made them. - Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

Her heart of compressed ash, which had resisted the most telling blows of daily reality without strain, fell apart with the first waves of nostalgia. - Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Jim said that bees won’t sting idiots, but I didn’t believe that, because I tried them lots of times myself and they wouldn’t sting me. - Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

It had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid. - George Eliot, Middlemarch

I gave my whole heart up, for him to hold. - Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

Here let dead poetry rise once more to life. - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

If you love reading the classics, why not jump over to Viewtale and take a read through all the great eBooks and podcasts on offer?

Great lines from classic books

Fans of the classics will love this collection curated by the Viewtale review team.

They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels. - Kate Chopin, The Awakening

I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it. - J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same—everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same—people who had never learned to think but who were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world. - George Orwell, 1984

Ever’body’s askin’ that. “What we comin’ to?” Seems to me we don’t never come to nothin’. Always on the way. - John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

The Mole was a good listener, and Toad, with no one to check his statements or to criticize in an unfriendly spirit, rather let himself go. Indeed, much that he related belonged more properly to the category of what-might-have-happened-had-I-only-thought-of-it-in-time-instead-of-ten-minutes-afterwards. - Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. - Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

And they beat. The women for having known them and no more, no more; the children for having been them but never again. They killed a boss so often and so completely they had to bring him back to life to pulp him one more time. Tasting hot mealcake among pine trees, they beat it away. Singing love songs to Mr. Death, they smashed his head. More than the rest, they killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on. - Toni Morrison, Beloved

I saw within Its depth how It conceives All things in a single volume bound by Love of which the universe is the scattered leaves. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

And again she felt alone in the presence of her old antagonist, life. - Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

It was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness. - Albert Camus, The Stranger

A certain pride, a certain awe, withheld him from offering to God even one prayer at night, though he knew it was in God’s power to take away his life while he slept and hurl his soul hellward ere he could beg for mercy. - James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion. - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion. - Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

It is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance. - Franz Kafka, The Trial

The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames. - Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Who then may trust the dice, at Fortune’s throw? - Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

If you love reading the classics, why not jump over to Viewtale and take a read through all the great eBooks and podcasts on offer?

Classic family books for teens

If you are looking for some great classic books for your teen that they can enjoy any day of the week, take a look at these curated by the Viewtale review team.

1. The Giver - In a dystopian world, Jonah discovers that the world isn’t what it seems to be as he learns about the colorful past. As he learns about the harsh reality of his world, he decides it is better to run.

2. A Wrinkle in Time - Planets and time travel, oh my! You won’t want to put down this thrilling fantasy adventure of Meg Murry as she tries to find her father.

3. Ender’s Game - Are aliens and military tactics more your jam? Fall into the world of Ender Wiggin and his fight to eradicate the Formics.

4. Brave New World - You’d think that a pain-free world would be great. But as you see in the dystopian novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, life loses its luster and becomes meaningless.

5. Frankenstein - Dive into Mary Shelley’s mind as she has Dr. Frankenstein create a monster in this romantic classic. But it will leave you questioning, who is the real monster?

6. Matilda - Being born special isn’t all it’s cracked up to be for Matilda in this light fantasy classic. That is until she discovers the power of telekinesis.

7. Tuck Everlasting - Romance blooms in this classic romance of Winnie Foster and Jesse Tuck. However, when she learns his secret, it could change her life forever.

8. The Time Machine - H.G. Wells is a master at his craft. Standing the test of time, you’ll find this 1800s science fiction about a Victorian man traveling to the year 802,701 an instant page-turner.

9. Dracula - Many depictions of Dracula have evolved over the years, but you should dive into Bram Stoker's Dracula. This gothic novel might not be exactly what teens expect.

10. The War of the Worlds - Interested to see how someone can make it out of an alien invasion? The classic The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells is the basis of many current invasion books and movies.

11. The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials Series) - A modern fantasy classic published in the mid-nineties, The Golden Compass offers a fantasy universe, familiars, and adventure that allows you to escape reality.

12. The Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter Series) - Enter a world of magic like nothing that you’ve ever seen before by following Harry Potter on his journey to Hogwarts.

For more great classic reads for the entire family, check out Viewtale.

Timeless Chapter Books for Kids

Introduce your child to unforgettable characters who will always have a special place in their heart. These books all come highly recommended by the Viewtale review team. Grab them for your young readers today.

Harriet the Spy By Louise Fitzhugh

Harriet M. Welsch is a spy. In her notebook, she writes down everything she knows about everyone, even her classmates and best friends. Then Harriet loses track of her notebook, and it ends up in the wrong hands. Before she can stop them, her friends have read the always truthful, sometimes awful things she's written about each of them. Will Harriet find a way to put her life and her friendships back together?

James and the Giant Peach By Roald Dahl

When poor James Henry Trotter loses his parents in a horrible rhinoceros accident, he is forced to live with his two wicked aunts, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. After three years, he becomes "the saddest and loneliest boy you could find." Then one day, a wizened older man in a dark-green suit gives James a bag of magic crystals that promise to reverse his misery forever. When James accidentally spills the crystals on his aunts' withered peach tree, he sets the adventure in motion. From the old tree, a single peach grows, and grows, and grows some more until finally James climbs inside the giant fruit and rolls away from his despicable aunts to a whole new life. James befriends an assortment of hilarious characters, including Grasshopper, Earthworm, Miss Spider, and Centipede, each with their song to sing.

Elijah of Buxton By Christopher Paul Curtis

It's 1860, and eleven-year-old Elijah is a first-generation freeborn child. His Canadian town of Buxton, located just across the border from Detroit, serves as a haven for runaway slaves and their children, where Blacks can live free and govern themselves away from the horrors of pre-emancipation America. Elijah sets off for Detroit in pursuit when the town's corrupt preacher steals money from a citizen who's been saving to buy his family's freedom. He encounters a group of captured runaway slaves; unable to keep them all, he escapes with the youngest--a baby--and returns Buxton a hero.

For plenty more great classic reads and reviews, check out Viewtale.

Top 3 eBooks For Watch Collectors

If you are a collector of watches, reading classic eBooks about the most excellent watches of all time is fun. These books will provide you with the information you need to know the most iconic timepieces. Here are some of the all-time most significant eBooks that will leave you mesmerized.

In Search of Wrist Watches, Antique, and Vintage Pocket Watches by Thomas M. Meine, Matthew Stannard

It is unimaginable that the two authors of the book are neither watchmakers nor specialists of a specific watch type. They just dedicated their collecting with a zeal that made this book more interesting. It guides into the possible-want-to-be collectors with advice, also expressing subjective opinion narrated accurately.

In The Journey of Collecting Luxury Watches eBook by Leonard Lowe

What a great book that keeps the watch enthusiasts glued on it. The author has profound, friendly, and clear writing skills that will leave you satisfied. The omission of Grand Seiko felt somehow odd, but the insights into the great book are exhilarating. This is a must-read for watch lovers.

Treasure in Time eBook by E.J Kelly

The art of profit collecting vintage watches gives you a newly revised and more expanded scrutiny into these watches. This book is so captivating, with a sweet no-nonsense, more so unpretentious guide to the collection of vintage watches. The author aims at helping the reader walk away from buying mistakes.

Are you a watch collector looking for eBooks that will help you to learn about the most incredible collections? Visit Viewtale.com.

Learn About the Top Vintage Vehicles With These eBooks

A wide delve into the classic cars makes your eyes endeavor on that feast. It shows that the automobile world has come a long way to serve us with high-performance engines. Let’s take a look at some of the great eBooks about vintage cars written by some of the world's best authors.

Creation, Rise, and Fall of Chrysler’s Engine by Steve Lehto

This eBook offers a behind-the-scenes tour into the automobile world dating way back to the 1960s. The author relies on extensive research with reliable first-hand accounts from the surviving members who brought the turbine programs. He takes you to chronicle documents that bold development of that jet turbine engine.

Porsche 911 - The Super Car by Robert McGowan

Complete beginners guide to the ever built impeccable engine. If you have been dreaming of owning a Porsche, then this book serves you right. It has the smartest route to get ownership of this fine sports car.

Montezuma’s Ferrari eBook: The Last Open Road by BS Levy

This novel is author/racer Levy’s historically intricate, profound, and hilarious series called “The last open road.” It is a typical review of classic sports cars that earned this esteemed eBook honors. According to the weekly publishers of the Auto-sport F1, BS Levy is regarded as a marvellous storyteller. More of his styles are unique and will make you yearn for more.

If you are a fan of the all-time greatest, head over to Viewtale.com.