ShortList is supported by you, our amazing readers. When you click through the links on our site and make a purchase we may earn a commission. Learn more

The 45 most powerful literary quotes of all time

The best memorable, inspiring and impactful passages of prose.

11 September 2023

The most powerful literary quotes from famous books, poems and plays have the ability to stop you in your tracks. Whether you're hunting for the perfect sentiment to use in a speech or hoping to discover a bit of inspiration to get you through a difficult time, we highly recommend leafing through some of the greatest creative works of art.

Tense, thrilling page-turners are exciting to read. But hiding in the pages of some of the best novels of all time there are sentences that are so impactful, so powerful, that you stop reading and simply live in the beautiful prose for a moment.

In this guide we honour 45 of the most powerful sentences ever written. The most powerful, beautiful and heart-wrenching literary quotes that we hope you'll want to use and refer to or just contemplatively stare at again and again. We've included words spun from the minds of some of the best authors of all time, including Toni Morrison, Oscar Wilde and Stephen King.

If you love a literary quote that isn't on this list that hits you right in the feels every time you see it, then head to the comments – and upvote your faves!

Most powerful literary quotes

Author: Oscar Wilde

Year: 1890

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

764
86
Thanks for voting

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Year: 2006

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

446
98
Thanks for voting

Author: V.S. Naipaul

Year: 1971

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

385
52
Thanks for voting

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Year: 1877

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

351
59
Thanks for voting

Author: Truman Capote

Year: 1958

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

321
51
Thanks for voting

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.”

323
66
Thanks for voting

Author: H.G. Wells

Year: 1895

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

304
48
Thanks for voting

Author: Charles Dickens

Year: 1890

“We need never be ashamed of our tears.”

272
32
Thanks for voting

Author: Richard Yates

Year: 1961

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

280
41
Thanks for voting

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.”

248
22
Thanks for voting

Author: Philip K. Dick

Year: 1981

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

266
41
Thanks for voting

Author: Charlotte Brontë

Year: 1847

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

240
33
Thanks for voting

Author: Roald Dahl

Year: 1983

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

237
50
Thanks for voting

Author: Mary Shelley

Year: 1818

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

224
40
Thanks for voting

Author: Haruki Murakami

Year: 2002

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

208
37
Thanks for voting

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.”

189
35
Thanks for voting

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.”

198
46
Thanks for voting

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.”

176
31
Thanks for voting

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.”

188
48
Thanks for voting

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."

186
46
Thanks for voting

Author: George Orwell

Year: 1949

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

184
58
Thanks for voting

Author: James Joyce

Year: 1922

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

141
26
Thanks for voting

Author: John Steinbeck

Year: 1937

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

146
37
Thanks for voting

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.”

138
33
Thanks for voting

Author: Toni Morrison

Year: 1987

“You are your best thing”

146
42
Thanks for voting

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.”

137
39
Thanks for voting

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.”

133
36
Thanks for voting

Author: Martin Amis

Year: 1989

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

146
51
Thanks for voting

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.”

128
39
Thanks for voting

Author: Zora Neale Hurston

Year: 1937

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

111
31
Thanks for voting

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.”

107
33
Thanks for voting

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."

103
36
Thanks for voting

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.”

106
44
Thanks for voting

Author: Emily Brontë

Year: 1847

"Terror made me cruel"

85
25
Thanks for voting

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.”

93
38
Thanks for voting

Author: Sebastian Faulks

Year: 1993

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

84
30
Thanks for voting

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."

80
47
Thanks for voting

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.”

73
44
Thanks for voting

Author: Patricia Highsmith

Year: 1952

“Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her.”

62
40
Thanks for voting

Author: Louisa May Alcott

Year: 1868

“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”

9
0
Thanks for voting

Author: L. Frank Baum

Year: 1900

“You had the power all along my dear.”

5
3
Thanks for voting

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Year: 2006

“You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?’ Aunty Ifeka said. ‘Your life belongs to you and you alone.”

4
3
Thanks for voting

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Year: 1990

“Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman’s power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon.”

4
6
Thanks for voting

Author: Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Year: 1987

“I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue—my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”

3
9
Thanks for voting

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."

158
209
Thanks for voting

SOMETHING MISSING FROM OUR SHORTLIST?

Tell us about it, and if enough people agree we'll add it in.