concept

names Quotes

100+ of the best book quotes about names
01
Share
“The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn’t just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.”
T.S. Eliot
author
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
book
cats
names
concepts
02
Share
“love will come and when love comes love will hold you love will call your name and you will melt sometimes though love will hurt you but love will never mean to love will play no games cause love knows life has been hard enough already”
03
Share
“But the game involves only male names. Because, if it’s a girl, Laila has already named her.”
Laila
character
games
names
girls
boys
concepts
04
Share
“When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason ,I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: his ineffable effable Effanineffable Deep and inscrutable singular Name.”
05
Share
“My brothers gave me that name when I was little. It’s a kind of tree in Lienid, the po tree. In autumn its leaves turn silver and gold. Inevitable nickname, I guess.” Katsa wondered if the name had been given fondly, or it had been an attempt by Po’s brothers to isolate him—to remind him always that he was a Graceling.
Katsa
character
names
isolation
concepts
06
Share
“Call me however what thou wilt—I am who I must be. I call myself Zarathustra.”
07
Share
″‘No,’ said Coraline quietly, ‘I asked you not to call me Caroline. It’s Coraline.‘”
08
Share
″‘Could you just call me Pigeon?’ he asked the teacher when she read his name. ‘Does your mother call you Pigeon?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then to me you are Paul.’ ... ‘Nathan Sutter,’ the teacher read. ‘My mother never calls me Nathan.’ ‘Is it Nate?’ ‘She calls me Honeylips.‘”
09
Share
″‘I told you. On his eleventh birthday. At three o’clock in the afternoon. It’ll sort of home in on him. He’s supposed to name it himself.‘”
10
Share
“‘Names are not important. It’s what lies inside of you that matters.’”
11
Share
“‘You bear many names, and so I shall name you as well.’ Her hand rose to Celaena’s forehead and she drew an invisible mark. ‘I name you Elentiya.’ She kissed the assassin’s brow. “I give you this name to use with honor, to use when other names grow too heavy. I name you Elentiya, ‘Spirit That Could Not Be Broken.””
12
Share
“We learned to lip-read, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other’s mouths. In this way we exchanged names from bed to bed: “Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June.”
13
Share
“Then he spoke his son’s name.”
14
Share
“My name back then was Chiyo. I wouldn’t be known by my geisha name, Sayuri, until years later.”
15
Share
“Names are powerful things. They act as an identity marker and a kind of map, locating you in time and geography. More than that, they can be a compass.”
16
Share
″[Gus] felt such love for Lorie that even speaking her name caused him to feel weak sometimes.”
17
Share
“Nobody -- that’s my name. Nobody -- so my mother and father call me, all my friends.”
Homer
author
Parents
person
friendship
names
concepts
18
Share
“All stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.”
19
Share
“The one thing we could not do was settle on a name. Nothing seemed quite right. Nothing was perfect enough for this baby. My father seemed more worried about this than my mother. “Something will come to us,” my mother said. “The perfect name will arrive in the air one day.”″
20
Share
“I wish someone would call me by my real name. My name isn’t Sugar. It’s Chanhassen.”
21
Share
“My name in his voice sends a jolt through me, creates me in the way he sees me and feels about me and the way I would be with my name in his mouth forever. Finally I understand the power in names, the power that we give people when we tell them our names.”
22
Share
“Perhaps that was the beginning of it. Mafatu, the boy who had been christened Stout Heart by his proud father, was afraid of the sea.”
23
Share
“One sign that I am violating my own nature in the name of nobility is a condition called burnout. Though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not possess-the ultimate in giving too little!”
24
Share
“He must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a favorite steed of his master’s, the choleric Van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own spirit into the animal; for, old and broken-down as he looked, there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the country.”
25
Share
“Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!”
26
Share
“Then the thought of killing a wild boar in single-handed combat struck him dumb with wonder. Why, he would never have dreamed such a thing in Hikueru! He was Mafatu, the Boy Who Was Afraid.”
27
Share
“It was obvious to everyone that Mafatu was useless upon the sea. He would never earn his proper place in the tribe. Stout Heart- how bitter the name must taste upon his father’s lips!”
28
Share
“Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name.”
29
Share
“What of a love unspoken? Is it weaker without a name? Does this love deserve 2 exist without a title”
30
Share
“Huh, Dilsey said. Name aint going to help him. Hurt him, neither. Folks don’t have no luck, changing names. My name been Dilsey since fore I could remember and it be Dilsey when they’s long forgot me.”
31
Share
“How can there be two Pauls? ‘You’d call him Uncle Paul.’ That’s too many names, my head’s full. My tummy’s still empty like the apple isn’t there. ‘What’s for lunch?‘”
Room
book
Jack
character
32
Share
“Near the start [of the note], there’s two words I never saw before, Ma says they’re her names like TV persons have, what everybody in Outside used to call her, it’s only me who says Ma.”
Room
book
Jack
character
33
Share
“Forgetfulness, too, causes anger, as when our own names are forgotten, trifling as this may be; since forgetfulness is felt to be another sign that we are being slighted; it is due to negligence, and to neglect us is to slight us.”
34
Share
“Flowers will die, the sun will set, but you are a friend, I won’t forget. Your name is so precious, it will never grow old. Its engraved in my heart, in letters of gold.”
35
Share
‘His name was Michael Oher, but everyone just called him ‘Big Mike.‘”
36
Share
“My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn, I outgrow it, I change it.”
37
Share
″‘You figure some kind of cult? […] The long hair, no surnames, the state of that tooth…‘”
38
Share
“Nothing makes Ma scared. Except Old Nick maybe. Mostly she calls him just ‘him’, I didn’t even know the name for him until I saw a cartoon about a guy that comes in the night called Old Nick.”
Room
book
Jack
Old Nick
characters
fear
scary
names
concepts
39
Share
“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls: Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ’twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed.”
40
Share
“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”
41
Share
″‘I will give you a name,’ he said to it, ‘and I shall call you Sting.‘”
42
Share
“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn’t. Anyhow here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-the-Pooh.”
43
Share
“When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, ‘But I thought he was a boy?’ ‘So did I,’ said Christopher Robin. ‘Then you can’t call him Winnie?’ ‘I don’t.’ ‘But you said—” ‘He’s Winnie-the-Pooh. Don’t you know what ‘ther’ means?‘”
44
Share
“For just a buck, you get the name and number of your one true soul mate. For five bucks, you get your top five.”
45
Share
“Two steps behind her, I say her name. ‘Skye.‘”
46
Share
“Well, right when you asked me if I had a name I thought, yeah, he’s right, I do need a name. But I wanted to pick a good one, so I read a book called ‘How to Name Your Baby’, and out of a hundred and eighty thousand names that’s the one I liked the best.”
47
Share
″‘That’s a lovely idea, Diana,’ said Anne enthusiastically. ‘Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn’t beautiful to begin with... making it stand in people’s thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself.‘”
48
Share
“I think people make their names nice or ugly just by what they are themselves.”
49
Share
“I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.”
50
Share
“But if you call me Anne, please call me Anne with an ‘e’.”
51
Share
“I wouldn’t have even have remembered her name, if she hadn’t later accused me of killing her husband.”
52
Share
“In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singtime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven!”
53
Share
“It’s a very important name – I don’t expect there are many bears in the world called Paddington!”
54
Share
″‘There’s nothing wrong with him!’ I said. ‘My mother calls him Fudge. My father calls him Fudge. My grandmother calls him Fudge. His friends call him Fudge. My friends call him Fudge. I call him Fudge. He calls himself Fudge...‘”
55
Share
“We called him Old Yeller. The name had a sort of double meaning. One part meant that his short hair was a dingy yellow, a color that we called “yeller” in those days. The other meant that when he opened his head, the sound he let out came closer to being a yell than a bark.”
56
Share
“He was a good little monkey and always very curious.”
57
Share
“It sailed through the farmland high on a breeze...over the ocean... and through the trees..until everyone hear and everyone knew of the one and only ever you.”
58
Share
“So enchanted with you were the wind and the rain that they whispered the sound of your wonderful name.”
59
Share
“Then a man asked, ‘What is your name, boy?’ Henry did not know what to say. He did not want to tell his name. So he answered, ‘Henry James.’ Now this was Henry’s name, but it was not all of his name.”
60
Share
″‘I guess it don’t make no difference what you call it so long as you know where it is,’ remarked Mr. Cobb sententiously. Rebecca turned the full light of her eyes upon him reproachfully, almost severely, as she answered: ‘Oh! Don’t say that, and be like all the rest! It does make a difference what you call things.‘”
61
Share
″‘What’s your name?’ she asked me. I made myself look up. ‘Its... Crispin.’ ‘Now there’s a highborn name for a lowly lad.‘”
62
Share
“For as long as I could recall, my mother had simply called me ‘Son,’ and, since her name was Asta, ‘Asta’s son’ became my common name. In a world in which one lived by the light of a father’s name and rank, that meant—since I had no father—I existed in a shadow.”
63
Share
“Most of all I would like to have a name, instead of just that pesky rat.”
Pesky Rat
character
names
hopes
concepts
64
Share
“To the rest of the world the name of Henry VIII brought a shiver, and suggested an ogre whose nostrils breathed destruction and whose hand dealt scourgings and death; but to this boy the name brought only sensations of pleasure, the figure it invoked wore a countenance that was all gentleness and affection. He called to mind a long succession of loving passages between his father and himself, and dwelt fondly upon them, his unstinted tears attesting how deep and real was the grief that possessed his heart.”
65
Share
“I call him the rabbit man, but he doesn’t look or act like a rabbit. Doesn’t have long ears or a lot of children. Actually, I can’t remember why I call him that. I just do. Sometimes in your mind you call someone something just because it tickles you softly to call them that.”
66
Share
“Harry knew all their names. And he always called out their names, just to make sure they were safe.”
67
Share
“You are my Scelidosaurus. You are my Stegosaurus. You are my Triceratops.”
68
Share
“The man said, ‘Dinosaurs? Yes we have found some dinosaurs. But how do you know if they are your dinosaurs?’ Harry said, ‘I will close my eyes and call their names. Then you will know.‘”
69
Share
“I like videos. But I like my dinosaurs better because you can fix them, you can bath them, you can take them to bed. And best of all, you can say their names.”
70
Share
“People, shadows, good, bad, Heaven, Hell: all of these were names, labels, that was all. Humans had created these opposites: Nature recognized no opposites. Even life and death weren’t opposites in Nature: one was merely an extension of the other.”
71
Share
“Let’s call him a small hero; a small hero doing quiet deeds. The world needs more of those.”
Max
book
names
world
quiet
deeds
superhero
small
concepts
72
Share
“The Carpet was full of life, but it did not know it was alive. It could be, but it could not think. It did not even know what it was. “And so from the dust came us, the Carpet People. We gave the Carpet its name, and named the creatures, and the weaving was complete.”
73
Share
“There’s no such thing as a perfect name.”
74
Share
“With that, Miyax became Julie. She was given a cot near the door in Martha’s little house and was soon walking to school in the darkness. She liked to learn the printed English words in books, and so a month passed rather happily.”
75
Share
“He is aware that his parents, and their friends, and the children of their friends, and all his own friends from high school, will never call him anything but Gogol.”
76
Share
″‘Couldn’t Great-Grandma have used the names again, once the children were dead?’ asked Inez, being practical. ‘And how would brother and sister be told apart in Heaven, may I ask? And the bad luck! Consider the bad luck!‘”
77
Share
“Such a name sounds good only on a tombstone.”
78
Share
“Mrs Koala had not thought of a name for her baby. Now, she thought it quite time he was christened, so one day she talked the matter over with his father. ‘Shall we call him ‘Walter’ or ‘Bluegum?’ she inquired. ‘No,’ grunted Mr Koala. ‘Let’s call hum ‘Blinky Bill.’ So Blinky Bill he became from that moment.”
79
Share
“Inez thought [the Baby] must be searching for a name, since Mrs. da Souza would not give it one. Mrs. da Souza considered it a waste to name a child before knowing whether it would survive.”
80
Share
“So they respected his name when he got one. And his name was ‘Jock’.”
81
Share
“Samson- one of the most powerful and feared figures in the Old Testament. It was rather a grand name for such a scruffy, nondescript dog.”
82
Share
“One day Grace’s teacher said they would do the play Peter Pan. Grace knew who she wanted to be. When she raised her hand, Raj said, ‘You can’t be Peter- that’s a boy’s name.‘”
83
Share
“ ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Treehorn,’ said Treehorn. ‘First time I ever heard of a family naming two boys the same name,’ said the bus driver. ‘Guess they couldn’t think of any other name, once they thought of Treehorn.’ Treenhorn said nothing.”
84
Share
“I keep six honest serving-men; (They taught me all I knew) Their names are What and Where and When And How and Why and Who.”
85
Share
“Renaming my brother was perhaps the kindest thing I ever did for him, because nobody expects much from someone called Doodle.”
86
Share
“The Rodent, for that was the boat’s name, proved to be very well made and very well suited to the sea. And Amos, after one miserable day of seasickness, proved to be a natural sailor, very well suited to the ship.”
87
Share
“Stamp, your name is to be Laura. I’m sharing my name with you. I’m putting my power into you and you must do my work. Don’t listen to anyone but me. You are to be my command laid on my enemy.”
88
Share
“Seems to me he should have his name someplace. He’s too fine a fellow to be lost.”
89
Share
“And here is a card I’ve made with your name on it for you to keep tucked inside.”
90
Share
“Ordinary Jack, that’s me. It’s what they should’ve christened me- Ordinary Jack Matthew Bagthorpe- with an e.”
91
Share
“It was because Julilly was born in June and Mammy Sally liked lilies that she got her name. Most folk slurred the words together and they came out Julilly.”
92
Share
“ ‘Would you mind telling me what you are called?’ said Mrs Pig. ‘The children would like to know.’ ‘It’s Mrs Wolf,’ said the babysitter, crossing a pair of dark hairy legs and getting out her knitting.”
93
Share
“Calvin is my father. To myself I use his first name, as a sign of disrespect.”
94
Share
“My mother named me Autumn. People say to me “Oh how pretty,” and then the name seems to glide away from them, not grasping all the things that the word should mean to them, shades of red, change, and death.”
95
Share
“My name is Peak. Yeah, I know: weird name. But you don’t get to pick your name or your parents.”
Peak
book
Peak Marcello
character
names
weird
no choices
concepts
96
Share
“His last word was my name. His last thought was of me.”
97
Share
″‘Erica’s a very nice name,’ Miss Belmont said. ‘It means “great heroine”.‘”
98
Share
“I have a little doll, I take care of her clothes; She has soft flaxen hair, and her name is Rose. She has pretty blue eyes, and a very small nose, And a funny little mouth, and her name is Rose.”
99
Share
″‘You’re a bottler,’ said Charlie gratefully. ‘Isn’t she, Simey?’ Simon couldn’t answer. If he opened his mouth, he knew he would yell ‘Don’t call me that’. And what was the use? It would just make another name that nobody could say. They had to call him Simey; they were Edie and Charlie.”
100
Share
“One of them yell out, ‘Don’t let them punk you, Li’l Don and Li’l Zeke! It don’t matter that my pops been locked up for nine years or that King’s pops been dead almost as long. They still Big Don, the former crown, and Big Zeke, his right-had man. That make me Li’l Don and King Li’l Zeke. Guess we not old enough to go by our own names yet.”
101
Share
“Something happened to me that day on the cay. I’m not quite sure what it was even now, but I had begun to change. I said to Timothy, ‘I want to be your friend.’ He said softly, ‘Young bahss, you’ave always been my friend.’ I said, ‘Can you call me Phillip instead of young boss?’ ‘Phill-eep,’ he said warmly.”
102
Share
“And, she thought uncomfortably, what would happen if people did not recognize you? Would you know who you were yourself? If tomorrow they started to call her Vanessa or Janet or Elizabeth, would she know how to be, how to feel like, Charlotte? Were you some particular person only because people recognized you as that?”
103
Share
“There was something disconcerting about a book that had her own name on it, that no one ought to have written except herself, and yet that she had not written. Nor was her name now her property alone.”
104
Share
“He crossed to the far bank, shuddering with cold but walking slow and erect as he should through that icy, living water. As he came to the bank Ogion, waiting, reached out his hand and clasping the boy’s arm whispered to him his true name: Ged.”
105
Share
″‘The evil thing, the shadow that hunts me, has no name.’ ‘All things have a name,’ said Ogion”
106
Share
“But, as I got older and started getting game, the name took on a new meaning. And even though I wasn’t into all that jazz, every time I’d score, rebound, or steal a ball, Dad would jump up smiling and screamin’, ‘That’s my boy out there.‘”
107
Share
“The constant grappling between the Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers wasn’t a secret. Far from it, in fact, because the blood feud was not something that raged only between those with Cai and Montagov to their name. It was a cause that ordinary members loyal to either faction took on personally, with a fervor that could almost be supernatural.”
108
Share
“Neither of the girls had ever heard of a poor working boy with three names. ‘You’re not making it up?’ Cilla asked, almost respectfully. ‘I’ve heard tell of folk with three names, but I never saw one before.’ ”
109
Share
“She was not as portly as a trout; kinder than a pike; what fish was she? ‘I shall call her the Minnow,’ said David softly, digging deeply with his paddle.”
110
Share
“If someone were to tell a friend, ‘I want to see you tonight’, you would wonder what was meant by ‘you’. You would keep asking yourself, ‘Does “you” in this case mean “you” or “U”?’ If ‘you’ means ‘U’ and ‘U’ is me, then that lady wants to see me tonight. And then you would wonder why, I tell you, Professor Sherman, ‘U’ is a bad name.”
111
Share
“Now Hemlock Mountain was not a mountain at all, it was a hill, and not a very big one. But someone had started calling it Hemlock Mountain, and the name had stuck. Now everyone talked about ‘going over Hemlock Mountain.”
112
Share
“The wisest men in the world have but one opinion, and it is this. We know that Adam gave names to all the flowers created, and as this flower has remained unnamed since the days of Eden, it is doubtless one which was forgotten at the Creation, and the Lord has only just remembered to make it.”
113
Share
“You have yellow eyes like a stone curlew’s, so I’ll name you Alfanhui because that is the name the stone curlews call to each other.”
114
Share
“Piranesi. It is what he calls me. Which is strange because as far as I remember it is not my name.”
115
Share
“I shall only answer if you call me George. I hate being a girl. I won’t be. I don’t like doing the things that girls do. I like doing the things that boys do.”
116
Share
″...George hates being a girl, and we have to call her George, as if she were a boy. The naughty girl won’t answer if we call her Georgina.”
117
Share
“We three Fossils vow to try to put our name into history books, because it’s our very own, and nobody can say it’s because of our grandfathers, and we vow to try and earn money for Garnie until Gum comes home.”
118
Share
“Mother used to say that it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.”
119
Share
″‘Plain she may have been,’ retorted Rosie, ‘but my baby’s a beauty;‘”
120
Share
“Her great trial in life was her name, for she was a red-haired stoutish child and bore no resemblance to a lily of any kind or a rose unless it were a cabbage one, but, as she sometimes sighed, she supposed it might have been worse.”
121
Share
“Gummidge isn’t a very pretty name,′ objected Susan. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘It’s as ugly as I am.‘”
122
Share
″‘Gummidge isn’t pretty,’ she said, ‘but it’s a very interesting name.‘”
123
Share
“Enduring Odysseus, he was, and the name was stitched into his skin. Whoever saw him must salute and say: There is a man who has seen the world. There is a captain with stories to tell.”
124
Share
“This little girl had short hair, and short legs, and short frocks. But her name wasn’t short at all. It was Millicent Margaret Amanda.”
125
Share
“What shall I call, My dear little dormouse? His eyes are small, But his tail is e-nor-mouse.”
126
Share
“Like a kiss or caress in a Hindi movie, a husband’s name is something intimate and therefore unspoken, cleverly patched over.”
127
Share
“First of all let us reveal the secret which the master did not wish to reveal to Ivanushka. His beloved’s name was Margarita Nikolaevna.”

Recommended quote pages

View All Quotes

Bookroo

Book Clubs

Follow Bookroo