100 Of The Best Lines From Classic Literature

There is a reason why some authors have stood the test of time and remain a crucial part of the English curriculum in schools across the country. These authors have a way of making sentences and quotes stick with the reader, who will carry those lessons on with them for the rest of their lives. Ask anyone, and they will be able to recite a line from a book.

After doing some research, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best-known quotes from world-renowned authors that you’re guaranteed to recognize.

100 of the best lines from classic literature

Time Quotes

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

2. “She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.” – Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

3. “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.” – The Sound And The Fury by William Faulkner

4. “He told us we should always pray to God- talk to Him and all- wherever we were. He told us to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car.” – The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger 

5. “Time is the longest distance between two places.” – The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

6. “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” – The Philosophy of Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol

7. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – Requiem for a Nun by William Faulkner

8. “The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.” – The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

9. “Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.” – Les Caractères by Jean de La Bruyère

10. “The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.” – War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

11. “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.” – Walden by Henry David Thoreau

12. “Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.” – Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

Inspirational quotes

13. “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” – Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

14. “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.” – Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

15. “To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

16. “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” – The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

17. “It is a wise man’s duty to save himself for to-morrow, and not risk everything on one day.” – Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

18. “Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.” – The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

19. “You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” – Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

20. “It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.” – The Naval Treaty by Arthur Conan Doyle

21. “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..” – Paradise Lost by John Milton

22. “When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” – The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho 

23. “The thing is – fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.” – Lord of the Flies by William Golding

24. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” – 1984 by George Orwell

Philosophical Quotes

25. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” – Animal Farm by George Orwell

26. “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.” – Moby Dick by Herman Melville

27. “I don’t like work–no man does–but I like what is in the work–the chance to find yourself. Your own reality–for yourself not for others–what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.” – Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

28. “I’ve found that there is always some beauty left — in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you.” – The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

29. “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” – The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

30. “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” – Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

31. “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.” – On The Road by Jack Kerouac

32. “I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.” – The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

33. “There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by maneuvering and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. – Mr. Knightley” – Emma Quotes by Jane Austen

34. “You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.” – The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

35. “Without music, life would be a mistake.” – Twilight of the Idols by Friedrich Nietzsche

36. “Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.” – Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

37. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw

38. “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.” – Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

39. “Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them” – The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 

40. “Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.” – The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 

Wisdom Quotes

41. “No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.” – The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum

42. “Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.” – Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse 

43. “Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy.” – The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

44. “It was better to know the worst than to wonder.” – Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

45. “Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker” – Dracula by Bram Stoker 

46. “Because there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.” – The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

47. “No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.” – The Prophet by Khalil Gibran 

48. “That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.” – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

49. “To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.”- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

50. “A baby has brains, but it doesn’t know much. Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get.” – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

51. “Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.” – The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia by Samuel Johnson

52. “There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.” – Collected Poems of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

53. “I have always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions.” –  Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

54. “I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss” – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Truth Quote

55. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – The Importance of Being Earnest by  Oscar Wilde

56. “The truth.” Dumbledore sighed. “It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.” –Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

57. “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” – Twelve Steps to Happiness by Joe Klaas

58. “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” – Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

59. “Don’t let politeness interfere with truth” – Daddy-Long-Legs / Dear Enemy by Jean Webster

60. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” – Walden by Henry David Thoreau

61. “There’s more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.” – East of Eden by John Steinbeck

62. “If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.” – Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

63. “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Love quotes

64. “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?  It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” – Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

65. “But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires. – Dubliners James Joyce

66. “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” – Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë 

67. “I’ll hold you in my heart, until I can hold you in my arms.” – Peter Pan: J M Barrie illustrated by Steve Hutton

68. “One girl is worth more than twenty boys.” – Peter Pan Mini Classic by JM Barrie 

69. “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” – Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

70. “We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.” – True Love by Robert Fulghum

71. “He knew she was there by the joy and terror that took possession of his heart […] Everything was lit up by her. She was the smile that brightened everything around.” – Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

72. “Nobody gave you to me. Nobody said that’s the one for you. I picked you out. Wrong time, yep, and doing wrong by my wife. But the picking out, the choosing. Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it. I saw you and made up my mind. My mind. And I made up my mind to follow you too.” Joe Trace – Jazz by Toni Morrison

73. “It was his first experience with this kind of love and it nearly killed him.”- East of Eden by John Steinbeck

74. “I wanted to know that he would be okay if I died. I wanted to not be a grenade, to not be a malevolent force in the lives of people I loved.” – The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

75. “As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” – The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Life quotes

76. “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.” – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

77. “It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.” – Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

78. “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.” – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

79. “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.” – Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

80. “The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” – Middlemarch by George Eliot

81. “We need never be ashamed of our tears.” – Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

82. “He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, ‘Wait and Hope.’” – The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

83. “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.” – The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

84. “I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.” – Anthem by Ayn Rand

85. “Be good, be young, be true! Evil is nothing but vanity, let us have the pride of good, and above all let us never despair.” – The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils

86. “Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.” – Dune by Frank Herbert

87. “Truly wealth, which men spend all their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.” – King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard

88. “Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.” – Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

89.  “It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.”  – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

90. “Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes…” – Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

91. “Maybe ever’ body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.” – Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck

92. “I remembered everything. I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig tree and Marco’s diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon’s wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers and the Negro with his two kinds of beans and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a gray skull. Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, would numb and cover them. But they were part of me. They were my landscape.” – The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

93. “She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it).” –  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

94. “Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning.” – The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

95. “I wish I could care what you do or where you go but I can’t… My dear, I don’t give a damn..” – Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

96. “One day I will find the right words, and they all will be simple.” – ‘The Dharma Bums’ by Jack Kerouac

97. “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” – ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ by Zora Neale Hurston

98. “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” – Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

99. “There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.” – Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

100. “A classic is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it’s safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It’s acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion….” – The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

If you don’t recognize some of these, it’s time to get to some reading! We’ve listed a lot of quotes from a lot of different books. You can get to all of these books on top of your 2022 reading challenge and still live your busy life by learning how to speed read. For beginners, we have a Speed Reading Foundation Course that shows you the basic techniques you can practice to speed read. 

Not all literature is one and the same. Iris Reading’s online video course breaks down each type of literature and how to use these techniques to fly through any type of reading. From fiction to work documents, you’ll be getting through your to-read list in no time. Click to find out more today.