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The 40 most powerful literary quotes of all time

Memorable, inspiring and impactful passages of prose.

The 40 most powerful literary quotes of all time
12 December 2021

The most powerful literary quotes have the ability to stop you right in your tracks. Whether you are looking for that perfect sentence to use in a speech or want a bit of inspiration for yourself, you can do no better than hitting some of the greatest books of all time and finding a sublime sentence or two.

We all know that an irresistible page-turner is a wonderful thing, but the very greatest novels pack sentences so prevailing that you stop reading, lower the book and simply live in the words for a moment.

UPDATE:You have been voting in your thousands for the most powerful literary quotes of all time, with Oscar Wilde's wondrous quote from The Picture Of Dorian Gray currently hitting the top spot. A few votes could change things, though so keep upvoting the ones you love the most.

Here we pay tribute to our 40 most powerful sentences in novels - the most powerful literary quotes that you will want to use again and again.

In the list, you will find some of the best authors that have ever put pen to page: from George Eliot to Stephen King.

If you have a literary quote that isn't on this list that you think should be, then head to the comments - and upvote your faves!

Most powerful literary quotes

Most powerful literary quotes

1. The Picture Of Dorian Gray

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Author: Oscar Wilde

Year: 1890

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

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Author: Cormac McCarthy

Year: 2006

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

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Most powerful literary quotes

3. In A Free State

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Author: V.S. Naipaul

Year: 1971

"The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves."

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Most powerful literary quotes

4. Anna Karenina

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Author: Leo Tolstoy

Year: 1877

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

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Most powerful literary quotes

5. Breakfast At Tiffany's

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Author: Truman Capote

Year: 1958

“Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

6. The Time Machine

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Author: H.G. Wells

Year: 1895

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

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Most powerful literary quotes

7. Rita Hayworth And The Shawshank Redemption

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Author: Stephen King

Year: 1982

“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

8. Revolutionary Road

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Author: Richard Yates

Year: 1961

"No one forgets the truth; they just get better at lying."

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Most powerful literary quotes

9. Great Expectations

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Author: Charles Dickens

Year: 1890

“We need never be ashamed of our tears.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

10. The Scarlet Letter

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Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Year: 1850

“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.”

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Author: Philip K. Dick

Year: 1981

"It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane."

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Most powerful literary quotes

12. Jane Eyre

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Author: Charlotte Brontë

Year: 1847

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

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Most powerful literary quotes

13. Frankenstein

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Author: Mary Shelley

Year: 1818

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

14. The Witches

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Author: Roald Dahl

Year: 1983

"It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you."

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Most powerful literary quotes

15. Kafka On The Shore

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Author: Haruki Murakami

Year: 2002

"Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart."

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16. The Children Of Men

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Author: P.D. James

Year: 1992

“We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

17. Invisible Man

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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.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

18. Moby Dick

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Author: Herman Melville

Year: 1851

“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

19. On The Road

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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.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

20. The Handmaid's Tale

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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."

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Author: George Orwell

Year: 1949

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

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Author: James Joyce

Year: 1922

"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

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Most powerful literary quotes

23. Of Mice And Men

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Author: John Steinbeck

Year: 1937

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

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Most powerful literary quotes

24. Middlemarch

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Author: George Eliot

Year: 1874

“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, “Oh, nothing!” Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts— not to hurt others.”

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Author: Toni Morrison

Year: 1987

“You are your best thing”

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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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Most powerful literary quotes

27. A Room With A View

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Author: E.M. Forster

Year: 1908

“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm - yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

28. London Fields

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Author: Martin Amis

Year: 1989

"And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit."

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Most powerful literary quotes

29. Snow Falling On Cedars

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Author: David Guterson

Year: 1994

“None of those other things makes a difference. Love is the strongest thing in the world, you know. Nothing can touch it. Nothing comes close. If we love each other we’re safe from it all. Love is the biggest thing there is.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

30. Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Author: Zora Neale Hurston

Year: 1937

"She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her."

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31. The Sound And The Fury

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Author: William Faulkner

Year: 1929

“Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

32. The Mysterious Island

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Author: Jules Verne

Year: 1874

"It is a great misfortune to be alone, my friends; and it must be believed that solitude can quickly destroy reason."

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Most powerful literary quotes

33. The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time

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Author: Mark Haddon

Year: 2003

“Sometimes we get sad about things and we don’t like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes, we are sad but we really don’t know why we are sad, so we say we aren’t sad but we really are.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

34. Wuthering Heights

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Author: Emily Brontë

Year: 1847

"Terror made me cruel"

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Most powerful literary quotes

35. Stardust

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Author: Neil Gaiman

Year: 1999

“She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

36. Birdsong

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Author: Sebastian Faulks

Year: 1993

"I know. I was there. I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine."

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37. L.A. Confidential

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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.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

38. American Psycho

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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."

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Most powerful literary quotes

39. The Price Of Salt

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Author: Patricia Highsmith

Year: 1952

“Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her.”

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Most powerful literary quotes

40. The Good Soldier

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Author: Ford Madox Ford

Year: 1915

"Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing."

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