88 Best The Lincoln Highway Quotes

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Are you a bookworm looking for some The Lincoln Highway quotes to add to your collection? Well, you’ve come to the right place!

The #1 New York Times bestseller, The Lincoln Highway, has captured the hearts and minds of millions of readers worldwide. This masterfully written novel by Amor Towles has been hailed by critics and readers alike for its absorbing and sophisticated storytelling.

Set in the 1950s America, The Lincoln Highway follows the journey of 18-year-old Emmett Watson and his 8-year-old brother, Billy, as they embark on a fateful journey from Nebraska to California. Along the way, they meet a diverse cast of characters and face unexpected challenges, making for a gripping and emotional read. If you’re like me, then you’ve probably already highlighted and underlined your copy of this fantastic book.

But just in case you missed some of the best lines, I’ve compiled a list of the 88 best The Lincoln Highway quotes that will have you laughing, crying, and pondering the complexities of life. These quotes showcase the wit, wisdom, and storytelling prowess of Amor Towles, and they will transport you back to the colorful and exciting world of The Lincoln Highway.

So, buckle up and get ready for a joyride through some of the most beautiful, witty, and thought-provoking quotes from this literary masterpiece! Whether you’re a die-hard fan of the book or a first-time reader, these quotes will leave you with a deeper appreciation for the power of storytelling and the beauty of the human experience.

I hope you will enjoy the following list of 88 quotes for The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towlesy!

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The Lincoln Highway Quotes

“For kindness begins where necessity ends.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Wouldn’t it have been wonderful, thought Woolly, if everybody’s life was like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Then no one person’s life would ever be an inconvenience to anyone else’s. It would just fit snugly in its very own, specially designed spot, and in so doing, would enable the whole intricate picture to become complete.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“—It wasn’t a bother at all, the old gent replied, gesturing toward his bed. I was only reading. Ah, I thought, seeing the corner of the book poking out from the folds of his sheets. I should have known. The poor old chap, he suffers from the most dangerous addiction of all.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“The funny thing about a picture, thought Woolly, the funny thing about a picture is that while it knows everything that’s happened up until the moment it’s been taken, it knows absotively nothing about what will happen next. And yet, once the picture has been framed and hung on a wall, what you see when you look at it closely are all the things that were about to happen. All the un-things. The things that were unanticipated. And unintended. And unreversible.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“And I do it because it’s unnecessary. For what is kindness but the performance of an act that is both beneficial to another and unrequired?” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“If you take a trait that by all appearances is a merit—a trait that is praised by pastors and poets, a trait that we have come to admire in our friends and hope to foster in our children—and you give it to some poor soul in abundance, it will almost certainly prove an obstacle to their happiness. Just as someone can be too smart for their own good, there are those who are too patient for their own good, or too hardworking.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“in your time you shall do wrong unto others and others shall do wrong unto you. And these opposing wrongs will become your chains. The wrongs you have done unto others will be bound to you in the form of guilt, and the wrongs that others have done unto you in the form of indignation. The teachings of Jesus Christ Our Savior are there to free you from both. To free you from your guilt through atonement and from your indignation through forgiveness. Only once you have freed yourself from both of these chains may you begin to live your life with love in your heart and serenity in your step.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“He too had watched as the outer limits of his life had narrowed from the world at large, to the island of Manhattan, to that book-lined office in which he awaited with a philosophical resignation the closing of the finger and thumb. And then this… This! A little boy from Nebraska appears at his doorstep with a gentle demeanor and a fantastical tale. A tale not from a leather-bound tome mind you… But from life itself. How easily we forget-we in the business of storytelling- that life was the point all along.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“those who are given something of value without having to earn it are bound to squander it.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“How easily we forget-we in the business of storytelling- that life was the point all along.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“And from all of these pages upon pages, one thing I have learned is that there is just enough variety in human experience for every single person in a city the size of New York to feel with assurance that their experience is unique. And this is a wonderful thing. Because to aspire, to fall in love, to stumble as we do and yet soldier on, at some level we must believe that what we are going through has never been experienced quite as we have experienced it.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“I do believe that the Good Lord has a mission for each and every one of us—a mission that is forgiving of our weaknesses, tailored to our strengths, and designed with only us in mind. But maybe He doesn’t come knocking on our door and present it to us all frosted like a cake. Maybe, just maybe what He requires of us, what He expects of us, what He hopes for us is that—like His only begotten Son—we will go out into the world and find it for ourselves.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“I thought to myself that there are surely a lot of big things in America. The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty are big. The Mississippi River and the Grand Canyon are big. The skies over the prairie are big. But there is nothing bigger than a man’s opinion of himself.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Time is that which God uses to separate the idle from the industrious. For time is a mountain and upon seeing its steep incline, the idle will lie down among the lilies of the field and hope that someone passes by with a pitcher of lemonade. What the worthy endeavor requires is planning, effort, attentiveness, and the willingness to clean up.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Moments with other people, he found, were much more likely to be filled with laughter and surprises than moments with oneself. And moments with oneself were more likely to circle inward toward some thought that one didn’t want to be having in the first place. But on this occasion, on this occasion that he found himself with a moment to himself, Woolly welcomed it.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“That’s the sort of thing young people do: fan the flames of each other’s expectations—until the necessities of life begin to make themselves known.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Questions can be so tricky, he said, like forks in the road. You can be having such a nice conversation and someone will raise a question, and the next thing you know you’re headed off in a whole new direction. In all probability, this new road will lead you to places that are perfectly agreeable, but sometimes you just want to go in the direction you were already headed.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“You could almost hear the thumb of reality beginning to press down on that spot in the soul from which youthful enthusiasm springs.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“To hold another man in disdain, his father would say, presumed that you knew so much about his lot, so much about his intentions, about his actions both public and private that you could rank his character against your own without fear of misjudgment.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Because young children don’t know how things are supposed to be done, they will come to imagine that the habits of their household are the habits of the world.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“But being grateful was one thing, and being beholden, that was another thing altogether.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“From a man’s point of view, the one thing that’s needful is that you sit at his feet and listen to what he has to say, no matter how long it takes for him to say it, or how often he’s said it before. By his figuring, you have plenty of time for sitting and listening because a meal is something that makes itself.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Well, I’m sorry. But if ever you needed proof that the Bible was written by a man, there you have” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“As his father made painfully clear that night, to deface the pages of a book was to adopt the manner of a Visigoth. It was to strike a blow against that most sacred and noble of man’s achievements—the ability to set down his finest ideas and sentiments so that they might be shared through the ages.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Boys, she would begin in her motherly way, in your time you shall do wrong unto others and others shall do wrong unto you. And these opposing wrongs will become your chains. The wrongs you have done unto others will be bound to you in the form of guilt, and the wrongs that others have done unto you in the form of indignation. The teachings of Jesus Christ Our Savior are there to free you from both. To free you from your guilt through atonement and from your indignation through forgiveness. Only once you have freed yourself from both of these chains may you begin to live your life with love in your heart and serenity in your step.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“There are few things more beautiful to an author’s eye, he confessed to Billy, than a well-read copy of one of his books.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Because a farmer with a mortgage was like a man walking on the railing of a bridge with his arms outstretched and his eyes closed. It was a way of life in which the difference between abundance and ruin could be measured by a few inches of rain or a few nights of frost.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Not all worth knowing can be found between the covers of compendiums, my boy. Let’s simply say that my academy was the thoroughfare, my primer experience, and my instructor the fickle finger of fate.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“For what is kindness but the performance of an act that is both beneficial to another and unrequired?” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“The willingness to take a beating: That’s how you can tell you’re dealing with a man of substance. A man like that doesn’t linger on the sidelines throwing gasoline on someone else’s fire; and he doesn’t go home unscathed. He presents himself front and center, undaunted, prepared to stand his ground until he can’t stand at all.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Making a fresh start isn’t just a matter of having a new address in a new town. It isn’t a matter of having a new job or a new phone number or even a new name.A fresh start requires a cleaning of the slate and that means paying off all that you owe and collecting all that you are due.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“—Homer began his story in medias res, which means in the middle of the thing. He began in the ninth year of the war with the hero, Achilles, nursing his anger in his tent. And ever since then, this is the way that many of the greatest adventure stories have been told.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“It stands to reason that if we all agreed to let summer vacation last until the equinox, the world would be a much happier place.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“What, Woolly? What would be absotively magnificent? —A one-of-a-kind kind of day.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“What wisdom the Lord does not see fit to endow us with at birth, He provides through the gift of experience.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“In a way, the whiskey bottle was sort of like a pencil with eraser – with one end used for saying things, and the other for taking them back.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Half the time when you could use the help of a man, he’s nowhere to be found. He’s off seeing to one thing or another that could just as easily be seen to tomorrow as seen to today and that just happens to be five steps out of earshot. But as soon as you need him to be somewhere else, you can’t push him out the door.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“The Good Lord does not call you to your feet with hymns from the cherubim and Gabriel blowing his horn. He calls you to your feet by making you feel alone and forgotten. For only when you have seen that you are truly forsaken will you embrace the fact that what happens next rests in your hands, and your hands alone.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“And that’s when my allotment of not saying a word was all used up.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“But for your information, telling someone they didn’t have to go to the trouble of doing something is not the same as showing gratitude for it. Not by a long shot.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Sophistry. From the Greek sophistes—those teachers of philosophy and rhetoric who gave their students the skills to make arguments that could be clever or persuasive but which weren’t necessarily grounded in reality.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Whom I blame is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and every other man who’s served as priest or preacher since.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Lord, she says, can’t you see that my idler of a sister has left me to do all the work? Why don’t you tell her to lend me a hand? Or something to that effect. And Jesus, He replies: Martha, you are troubled by too many things when only one thing is needful. And it is Mary who has chosen the better way. Well, I’m sorry. But if ever you needed proof that the Bible was written by a man, there you have it. I” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“—Questions can be so tricky, he said, like forks in the road. You can be having such a nice conversation and someone will raise a question, and the next thing you know you’re headed off in a whole new direction. In all probability, this new road will lead you to places that are perfectly agreeable, but sometimes you just want to go in the direction you were already headed.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“That’s what rattled people do. They point a finger. They point a finger at whoever’s standing closest—and given the nature of how we congregate, that’s more likely to be friend than foe.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Most people make a habit of asking for things. At the drop of a hat, they’ll ask you for a light or for the time. They’ll ask you for a lift or a loan. For a hand or a handout. Some of them will even ask you for forgiveness. But Woolly Martin rarely asked for anything at all. So when he did ask for something, you knew it was something that mattered.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“The son of an Okie who hadn’t had enough sense to leave Oklahoma back in the thirties, Tommy Ladue was the sort of guy who looked like he was wearing overalls even when he wasn’t.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“There are few things more beautiful to an author’s eye, he concluded to Billy, than a well-read copy of one of his books” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“For what is kindness but the performance of an act that is both beneficial to another and unrequired? There is no” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“—What, Woolly? What would be absotively magnificent? —A one-of-a-kind kind of day.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“By tossing them together, it seemed to Emmett, Abernathe was encouraging a boy to believe that the great scientific discoverers were not exactly real and the heroes of legend not exactly imagined. That shoulder to shoulder they traveled through the realms of the known and unknown making the most of their intelligence and courage, yes, but also of sorcery and enchantment and the occasional intervention of the gods. Wasn’t it hard enough in the course of life to distinguish between fact and fancy, between what one witnessed and what one wanted? Wasn’t it the challenge of making this very distinction that had left their father, after twenty years of toil, bankrupt and bereft?” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Moments with other people, he found, were much more likely to be filled with laughter and surprises than moments with oneself.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Moments with other people, he found, were much more likely to be filled with laughter and surprises than moments with oneself. And moments with oneself were more likely to circle inward toward some thought that one didn’t want to be having in the first place.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“You’ve got to love that about Woolly. He’s always running about five minutes late, showing up on the wrong platform with the wrong luggage just as the conversation is pulling out of the station. Some might find the trait a little exasperating, but I’d take a guy who runs five minutes late over a guy who runs five minutes early, any day of the week.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty are big. The Mississippi River and the Grand Canyon are big. The skies over the prairie are big. But there is nothing bigger than a man’s opinion of himself.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“As Emmett walked out the door and climbed into his bright yellow car, I thought to myself that there are surely a lot of big things in America. The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty are big. The Mississippi River and the Grand Canyon are big. The skies over the praries are big. But there is nothing bigger than a man’s opinion of himself.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“The funny thing about a picture, thought Wooly, the funny thing about a picture is that while it knows everything that’s happened up until the moment it’s been taken, it knows absotively nothing about what will happen next. And yet, once the picture has been framed and hung on a wall, what you see when you look at it closely are all the things that were about to happen. All the un-things. The things that were unanticipated. And unintended. And unreversible.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“—Well, that’s life in a nutshell, ain’t it. Lovin’ to go to one” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“place and havin’ to go to another.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Because those who are given something of value without having to earn it are bound to squander it.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Xenos is a word from ancient Greek that means foreigner and stranger, guest and friend. Or more simply, the Other. As Professor Abernathe says: Xenos is the one on the periphery in the unassuming garb whom you hardly notice. Throughout history, he has appeared in many guises: as a watchman or attendant, a messenger or page, a shopkeeper, waiter, or vagabond. Though usually unnamed, for the most part unknown, and too often forgotten, Xenos always shows up at just the right time in just the right place in order to play his essential role in the course of events.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“In 49 B.C. when Caesar was the governor of Gaul, the Senate, which had become wary of his ambitions, recalled him to the capital, instructing him to leave his troops at the banks of the Rubicon. Instead, Caesar marched his soldiers across the river into Italy and led them straight to Rome, where he soon seized power and launched the Imperial Era. That’s where the expression crossing the Rubicon comes from. It means passing a point of no return.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“It is one of the most basic principles of infinity that it must, by definition, encompass not only one of everything, but everything’s duplicate, as well as its triplicate. In fact, to imagine that there are additional versions of ourselves scattered across human history is substantially less outlandish than to imagine that there are none.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everybody life was like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Then no one persons life would ever be an inconvenience to anyone else.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“the narrowing of life at the far tip of the diamond.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Emmett wasn’t one for circuses. He wasn’t one for magic shows or rodeos. He hadn’t even liked going to the football games at his high school, which were attended by nearly everyone in town. He’d simply never taken to the idea of sitting in a crowd to watch someone do something more interesting than what you were doing yourself.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“What Woolly did not tell Billy was that sometimes—like when he first arrived at St. Paul’s—he would wind the watch sixteen times for six days in a row on porpoise so that he could be half an hour ahead of everybody else.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s a certain charm to a town like this. And there’s a certain kind of person who would rather live here than anywhere else—even in the twentieth century. Like a person who wants to make some sense of the world. Living in the big city, rushing around amid all that hammering and clamoring, the events of life can begin to seem random. But in a town this size, when a piano falls out of a window and lands on a fellow’s head, there’s a good chance you’ll know why he deserved it.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Emmett shook his head, uncertain of whether his father’s actions should give him cause for disappointment or admiration. As usual with such puzzles of the heart, the answer was probably both.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“the Good Lord has a mission for each and every one of us—a mission that is forgiving of our weaknesses, tailored to our strengths, and designed with only us in mind.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“As Emmett walked out the door and climbed into his bright yellow car, I thought to myself that there are surely a lot of big things in America. The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty are big. The Mississippi River and the Grand Canyon are big. The skies over the prairie are big. But there is nothing bigger than a man’s opinion of himself.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Whenever I come to a new town, I like to get my bearings. I want to understand the layout of the streets and the layout of the people. In some cities this can take you days to accomplish. In Boston, it can take you weeks. In New York, years. The great thing about Morgen, Nebraska, is it only took a few minutes.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“As the old gent shuffled his way to the bureau, I scanned the room, curious as to his weakness. At the Sunshine hotel, for every room there was a weakness, and for every weakness an artifact bearing witness. Like an empty bottle that has rolled under the bed, or a feathered deck of cards on the nightstand, or a bright pink kimono on a hook. Some evidence of that one desire so delectable, so insatiable that it overshadowed all others, eclipsing even the desires for a home, a family, or a sense of human dignity.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Before, before, before. The funny thing about a picture, thought Woolly, the funny thing about a picture is that while it knows everything that’s happened up until the moment it’s been taken, it knows absotively nothing about what will happen next. And yet, once the picture has been framed and hung on a wall, what you see when you look at it closely are all the things that were about to happen. All the un-things. The things that were unanticipated. And unintended. And unreversible.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“The manner in which the convergence takes you by surprise, that is the cruelest part. And yet it’s almost unavoidable. For at the moment when the” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“—There I have sat in a room surrounded by books, as insulated” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“But what weighed on his father the most—what weighed on them both—was the realization that when Emmett’s mother had gripped her husband’s hand as the fireworks began, it hadn’t been in gratitude for his persistence, for his fealty and support, it had been in gratitude that by gently coaxing her from her malaise in order to witness this magical display, he had reminded her of what joy could be, if only she were willing to leave her daily life behind.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if everybody’s life was like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Then no-one’s life would ever be an inconvenience to anyone else’s. It would just fit snugly in its very own specially designed spot, and in so doing, would enable the whole intricate picture to become compete.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Nope, I said to myself while climbing into bed and switching off the light, there is no kindness in any of that. For kindness begins where necessity ends.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“—This is the Lincoln Highway, explained Billy, pointing to the long black line. It was invented in 1912 and was named for Abraham Lincoln and was the very first road to stretch from one end of America to the other.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“what luck did a glass of whiskey ever bring anyone.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“For only when you have seen that you are truly forsaken will you embrace the fact that what happens next rests in your hands, and your hands alone.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“And when we crossed into Nebraska? I thought I was going to get a concussion from the divots in the road. Someone should write a letter to the governor!” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“For Achilles the fatal flaw had been anger. When he was angry, Achilles could not contain himself. Even though it had been foretold that he might die during the Trojan War, once his friend Patroclus was killed, Achilles returned to the battlefield blinded by a black and murderous rage.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“But I won’t be able to make a start of setting it down until I know where the middle of it is.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“He began at the beginning—the very beginning—by opening to the endpapers. And it was a good thing he had.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Woolly had set about alphabetizing the spice rack. And it didn’t take long for him to discover just how many spices began with the letter C. In the entire rack there was only one that started with the letter A: Allspice,” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“You’ve got to love that about Woolly. He’s always running about five minutes late, showing up on the wrong platform with the wrong luggage just as the conversation is pulling out of the station.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“A good Christian shows compassion toward those who are in difficulty. And that is an important part of the parable’s meaning. But an equally important point that Jesus is making is that we don’t always get to ‘choose’ to whom we should show our charity.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“Because to aspire, to fall in love, to stumble as we do and yet soldier on, at some level we must believe that what we are going through has never been experienced quite as we have experienced it.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“What right did he have to demand of Duchess that he atone for his sins? What right did he have to demand it of anyone?” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
“—This is it, he said. This is the Lincoln Highway.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

Thank you for reading my list of Amor Towlesy‘s best The Lincoln Highway quotes! Happy reading! ❤️