Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” is a novel that traces the lives of a group of college students at an elite Vermont college, who are pulled together by their affection for ancient Greek culture, only to find themselves consumed in a world of secrets and escalating effects.
The Secret History quotes offer you a glimpse into the thoughts of its characters and the deep moral questions that drive the plot. These quotes cut across beauty, intellect, betrayal and lots more.
These quotes give a deep insight into the mind of Donna Tartt, and how how she sees life as portrayed through storytelling.
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Top The Secret History Quotes
“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.” – Donna Tartt
“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.” – Donna Tartt
“We don’t like to admit the war between the old and the young. Especially if we stand to lose a great deal by it.” – Donna Tartt
“It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.” – Donna Tartt
“I came to understand that, in harboring the fearsome to the exclusion of all else, one can only be destroyed by the fearsome, and that one is often in a state of suspense.” – Donna Tartt
“If I had any hope left, any at all, I had come to the end of it.” – Donna Tartt
“The thought filled me with an odd, painful sort of consolation.” – Donna Tartt
“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.” – Donna Tartt
“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.” – Donna Tartt
“Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does.” – Donna Tartt
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Intriguing The Secret History Quotes
“Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.” – Donna Tartt
“It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don’t see how I could have done differently.” – Donna Tartt
“What we did was terrible, but still, I don’t think any of us were sorry for it while we were doing it.” – Donna Tartt
“Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things – naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror – are too terrible to ever really understand.” – Donna Tartt
“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.” – Donna Tartt
“The nicest thing about feeling happy is that you think you’ll never be unhappy again.” – Donna Tartt
“It’s a very hard thing to accept, that one’s own soul is monstrous. But it can be the only way to peace.” – Donna Tartt
“I felt his presence in my brain like a dark light, a voice other than mine.” – Donna Tartt
“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.” – Donna Tartt
“There’s nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over.” – Donna Tartt
Philosophical The Secret History Quotes
“What is happiness but the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?” – Donna Tartt
“The idea of the labyrinth, a maze where each man wandered blindly, had begun to obsess me.” – Donna Tartt
“To know the flaws, the small faults, and still love the person, it’s the miracle of the human relationship.” – Donna Tartt
“How quickly these accidents of fate are construed as moral judgements.” – Donna Tartt
“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty – unless she is wed to something more meaningful – is always superficial.” – Donna Tartt
“Can you think what the Mirror of Erised shows us all? It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts.” – Donna Tartt
“It is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.” – Donna Tartt
“It’s a very human impulse to see oneself as set apart, special, or different.” – Donna Tartt
“Life is a series of choices between bad and worse.” – Donna Tartt
“I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with ‘you’ in mind or, even worse, that there is a fine reason for everything that happens.” – Donna Tartt
The Secret History Quotes on Friendship
“It is better to be loved than feared.” – Donna Tartt
“Friendship, like credit, is highest when it is not used.” – Donna Tartt
“The bonds of friendship dwindle with age, Bunny had said. And perhaps this is so.” – Donna Tartt
“Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.” – Donna Tartt
“He was like a rabbit in a snare: too much panic, and he would chew through his own foot.” – Donna Tartt
“We are all capable of good and evil. Friends make the balance easier.” – Donna Tartt
“A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults.” – Donna Tartt
“The worse the mistake, the more you need your friends.” – Donna Tartt
“You can’t form a true friendship in a state of reserve and self-defense.” – Donna Tartt
“One must be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” – Donna Tartt
Inspirational The Secret History Quotes
“Remember that hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” – Donna Tartt
“Even if it’s a mistake, it’s my mistake. After all, we make our own destinies, and we must do our best, no matter how much we are pained by them.” – Donna Tartt
“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.” – Donna Tartt
“Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.” – Donna Tartt
“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.” – Donna Tartt
“Many things are not as they seem: the worst things in life never are.” – Donna Tartt
“I am happy only in that I am no longer unhappy.” – Donna Tartt
“One must always be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” – Donna Tartt
“It is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little sympathy and kindness there are in the world.” – Donna Tartt
“We all have a secret buried under lock and key in the attic of our soul. This is mine.” – Donna Tartt
The Secret History Quotes on Isolation
“Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow.” – Donna Tartt
“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs, and maybe even your mind.” – Donna Tartt
“It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.” – Donna Tartt
“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” – Donna Tartt
“I felt that I was an arrow, pulled back and ready to be launched into something big, and I didn’t care where. I simply wanted to cut through the air like a blade.” – Donna Tartt
“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.” – Donna Tartt
“Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.” – Donna Tartt
“Sometimes we just have to be forgiven for who we are.” – Donna Tartt
“There’s a part of us that remains untamed, capable of great cruelty and great kindness. It’s a strange duality, a battleground of good and evil, fought within ourselves.” – Donna Tartt
“The soul is not born; it does not die; it was not produced from anyone : Unborn, eternal, it is not slain, though the body is slain.” – Donna Tartt
The Secret History Quotes on Morality
“There’s a part of us that remains untamed, capable of great cruelty.” – Donna Tartt
“To lose one’s self in a character, to be absorbed in the plot of a novel, is to be relieved of the burden of one’s soul.” – Donna Tartt
“Morality is a very strange thing. To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.” – Donna Tartt
“It is only the sacred things that are worth touching.” – Donna Tartt
“We all think we’re going to be great and we feel a little bit robbed when our expectations aren’t met. But sometimes our expectations sell us short. Sometimes the expected simply pales in comparison to the unexpected.” – Donna Tartt
“It’s a very human impulse to see oneself as set apart, special, or different.” – Donna Tartt
“Life is a series of choices between bad and worse.” – Donna Tartt
“How quickly these accidents of fate are construed as moral judgements.” – Donna Tartt
“I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference. You know, actually change something.” – Donna Tartt
“I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with ‘you’ in mind or, even worse, that there is a fine reason for everything that happens.” – Donna Tartt
Tragic The Secret History Quotes
“What we did was terrible, but still, I don’t think any of us were sorry for it while we were doing it.” – Donna Tartt
“Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things – naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror – are too terrible to ever really understand.” – Donna Tartt
“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.” – Donna Tartt
“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.” – Donna Tartt
“Even if it’s a mistake, it’s my mistake. After all, we make our own destinies, and we must do our best, no matter how much we are pained by them.” – Donna Tartt
“To know the flaws, the small faults, and still love the person, it’s the miracle of the human relationship.” – Donna Tartt
“If I had any hope left, any at all, I had come to the end of it.” – Donna Tartt
“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.” – Donna Tartt
“The thought filled me with an odd, painful sort of consolation.” – Donna Tartt
“Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does.” – Donna Tartt
The Secret History Quotes on Power and Control
“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.” – Donna Tartt
“Control, I suppose, is the essence of all power, the ultimate aphrodisiac.” – Donna Tartt
“It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don’t see how I could have done differently.” – Donna Tartt
“When you feel that something is fundamentally wrong, but lack the power to rectify it, it eats into your soul day by day.” – Donna Tartt
“The key to control was not a multiplication of wealth but its subtraction: the more things you had, the more you had to lose.” – Donna Tartt
“Power without knowledge is merely brute force, but knowledge without power is futile.” – Donna Tartt
“Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.” – Donna Tartt
“The intoxication of power rapidly—bitterly—raveled into the fear of losing it.” – Donna Tartt
“Manipulation is moving people where you want them by more subtle means than brute force.” – Donna Tartt
“The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.” – Donna Tartt
The Secret History Quotes on Education
“It is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.” – Donna Tartt
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” – Donna Tartt
“The more you learn, the more you realize how much you do not know.” – Donna Tartt
“Great books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.” – Donna Tartt
“Education is a lifelong pursuit. You never finish learning, and the university is just one stop in a long journey.” – Donna Tartt
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” – Donna Tartt
“A classical education enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving.” – Donna Tartt
“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.” – Donna Tartt
“Learning preserves the errors of the past as well as its wisdom.” – Donna Tartt
“What is education but a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn?” – Donna Tartt
The Secret History Quotes on Secrets and Lies
“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. We fabricate our lives out of the lies we believe about ourselves.” – Donna Tartt
“There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that. And we believe in them until we cannot anymore.” – Donna Tartt
“What is a mystery is insignificant; what matters is who holds the strings.” – Donna Tartt
“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.” – Donna Tartt
“The best secrets are the most twisted.” – Donna Tartt
“Secrets are the very root of cool.” – Donna Tartt
“There’s nothing like a secret to bind people together.” – Donna Tartt
“People love mystery, and that is why they love my paintings.” – Donna Tartt
“It’s the fatal flaw of humanity that we’ll do anything to achieve our own ends and consider it moral.” – Donna Tartt
“Lies are infinitely more fascinating than the truth.” – Donna Tartt
Dark The Secret History Quotes
“Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires.” – Donna Tartt
“The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years—if it ever did end—began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.” – Donna Tartt
“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.” – Donna Tartt
“It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.” – Donna Tartt
“Sometimes you have to do something unforgivable just to be able to go on living.” – Donna Tartt
“For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless.” – Donna Tartt
“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.” – Donna Tartt
“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.” – Donna Tartt
“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.” – Donna Tartt
“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.” – Donna Tartt
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Final Thoughts
The quotes from Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” summarize the novel’s haunting charm and the deep moral complexity that characterizes its narrative.
Each phrase serves as a reflection of the complex relationships and philosophical dilemmas that these characters faces, intertwining a rich tapestry of thought that challenges you to contemplate the nature of truth, beauty, and moral ambiguity.
As you delve into these unforgettable lines, you will find yourself revisiting the themes of the novel—identity, consequences, and the frequently blurry line between right and wrong.