Top 40 Matthew Pearl Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “An obscure character by the name of Belial. He is interpreted as a minion of the devil by some scholars, but that is wrong. It is ignorance. The name means, literally speaking, ‘one who cannot be yoked,’ and it is really every one of us who takes control of our own destiny while others blow in the wind. We may be punished for it, but we would never do it another way. We are all Belials.”

— Matthew Pearl

2. “He was outwardly calm but inwardly bleeding to death.”

— Matthew Pearl

3. “Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us to know one another.”

— Matthew Pearl

4. “I prefer the society of one faithful person to an association of rapid talkers, who more than anything else seek admiration from one another.”

— Matthew Pearl

5. “Yes, we rather condemn people for eternity without the courtesy of informing them.”

— Matthew Pearl

6. “Romance is not an idea, but a moment. An unspoken glance when someone looks into your eyes and knows exactly who you are, what you need.”

— Matthew Pearl

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7. “These people build as if they were immortal and eat as if they were to die instantly.”

— Matthew Pearl

8. “They always blamed my reading, you know, for my having fewer friends than my brother and for my weak eyes, never thinking that because I had weak eyes and because I was shy, having a book at the ready rescued me.”

— Matthew Pearl

9. “People hate the idea of politicians, you see, but love the idea of authors, at least until they meet one.”

— Matthew Pearl

10. “You are always better off to read a book, anyway, than to meet the person behind it.”

— Matthew Pearl

11. “Avoid the Holy Grail, the heroic journeys, the pursuit of a legend – that is not the life of the bookaneer, who must keep his eyes on the ground while other book people live by dreaming.”

— Matthew Pearl

12. “I never fully realized how much a New England birth in itself was worth, but I am happy that that was my lot. I have felt it so keenly these last few days. Dear old New England, with all her sternness and uncompromising opinions; the home of all that is good and noble.”

— Matthew Pearl

13. “When you ask one friend to dine, give him your best wine. When you ask two, the second best will do.”

— Matthew Pearl

14. “These tears were difficult: they didn’t want to come out and they didn’t want to stay in.”

— Matthew Pearl

15. “Imagine! It is the real power of a book – not what is on the page, but what happens when a reader takes the pages in, makes it part of himself. That is the definition of literature.”

— Matthew Pearl

16. “On the trees were no longer only leaves but brown fruits, on the bushes no longer blossoms but clusters of red berries. And the wind had a rough manliness in its voice – the tone not of a lover but of a husband.”

— Matthew Pearl

17. “Obsession of a strong-hearted woman, Mr. Dolby, can be more dangerous than ten men.”

— Matthew Pearl

18. “Beware the camel’s nose – for its whole body will soon follow.”

— Matthew Pearl

19. “Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it. They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into madness and despair. Stay away from what you do not fathom from now on...”

— Matthew Pearl

20. “Though a woman tempted man to eat, my dear Longfellow,” said Holmes, “you never hear of Eve having to do with his drinking, for he took to that of his own notion.”

— Matthew Pearl

21. “The books do pretend, Mr. Branagan. Surely. But that is not all. Novels are filled with lies, but squeezed in between is even more that is true – without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see?”

— Matthew Pearl

22. “Before long, I had lost my youth and my patience for indulging others. Books were everything in life; books were better than wine.”

— Matthew Pearl

23. “These writers take the essence of every person around them, turn them into books and stories without permission or even a simple thank-you, and want all the credit and glory for themselves.”

— Matthew Pearl

24. “He worshipped at the temple of her intellect and I believe it was a comfort to him to know that she left our world with it still shining.”

— Matthew Pearl

25. “When I ply the cutlass and make the equivalent of sixpence, idiot conscience applauds me. But if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds by writing, idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the day wasted. No, to come down covered with mud and drenched with sweat and rain after some hours in the bush. To change, rub down, and take a chair in the verandah, that makes for a quiet conscience.”

— Matthew Pearl

26. “Remember that there are two things in this life that are never worth crying about: what can be cured and what cannot be cured.”

— Matthew Pearl

27. “A man’s library opens up his character to the world.”

— Matthew Pearl

28. “When they dreamed of turning iron and metal into gold, they called it alchemy. The much more far-fetched dream of turning bound sheafs of plain paper into fortunes, they call publishing.”

— Matthew Pearl

29. “It is my conviction that we make ourselves who we want to be and not chain ourselves to the notions of busybodies who wish to judge us.”

— Matthew Pearl

30. “Unlike New York or Chicago, once you were inside Boston, any point in the city was fairly convenient to any other.”

— Matthew Pearl

31. “It is not when a man is at the end of his life, but when a man is at the end of his profession, that his soul shows itself.”

— Matthew Pearl

32. “I do not seek the mantle of genius. I am an appreciator, an observer, a preposition, and content in that, and that’s me in a nutshell.”

— Matthew Pearl

33. “How odd it must be to go through life believing that a book is a book.”

— Matthew Pearl

34. “Strangers talking over piles of books do not remain strangers for long. Had I never learned to like books, I would have become the dullest sort of hermit.”

— Matthew Pearl

35. “What they don’t realize is that sequels are bound to disappoint those who have waited for them.”

— Matthew Pearl

36. “Strangers talking over piles of books do not remain strangers for long.”

— Matthew Pearl

37. “The same thing as you, the same as she. The same as anyone who has ever been doubted or told to go away. To prove myself better.”

— Matthew Pearl

38. “I was looking for something else in books. I could not really say what, but I think I can say why: a notion started in my own brain was probably wrong, but an answer read in a work of literature would be right. That was my conviction at nineteen, and only in later years would I come to trust myself over a book.”

— Matthew Pearl

39. “Now, on his way to another lecture, the very thought of entering a room full of students, who still thought it was possible to learn all about something, made him yawn.”

— Matthew Pearl

40. “Longfellow smiled. “A great part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, my dear Lowell, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.”

— Matthew Pearl

41. “What’s the use of having eyes if we can’t see the world we pass through?”

— Matthew Pearl

42. “People admired her poetry, but she knew there were plenty of readers who questioned it. How could she write brokenhearted verse if she never loved? Why did she compose so much about death if she knew little of life?”

— Matthew Pearl

43. “What begins as taste becomes religion.”

— Matthew Pearl

44. “It is Dante who decides who should be punished and where they go, what torments they suffer. It is the poet who takes those measures, yet by making himself the journeyer, he tries to make us forget: We think he too is another innocent witness to god’s work.”

— Matthew Pearl