quotations about books
In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.
THOMAS MANN
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/b/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 37
letter
In perusing the writings of sensible men, we have frequent opportunities of examining our own hearts, and by that means, of attaining a more certain knowledge of ourselves.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding.
CHARLES LAMB
"On Books and Reading", The Last Essays of Elia
One cannot celebrate books sufficiently. After saying his best, still something better remains to be spoken in their praise. As with friends, one finds new beauties at every interview, and would stay long in the presence of those choice companions. As with friends, he may dispense with a wide acquaintance. Few and choice. The richest minds need not large libraries.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.
GEORGE W. BUSH
"W's Greatest Hits: The top 25 Bushisms of all time", Slate, January 12, 2009
There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many types of people, and everybody wants to read something different.
DANIEL HANDLER (as Lemony Snicket)
The Bad Beginning
Books are embalmed minds. They make the great of other days our present teachers.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed.
ANNE RICE
The Witching Hour
The best books are those which lift us to a higher plane where we breathe a purer atmosphere.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Architects of Fate
The popular books are the novels, dealing with life under all possible conditions, and they are widely read not only because they are entertaining, but also because they in a measure satisfy an unformulated belief that to see farther, to know all sorts of men, in an indefinite way, is a preparation for better social adjustment--for the remedying of social ills.
JANE ADDAMS
Democracy and Social Ethics
The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
What makes the success of many books consists in the affinity there is between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main ... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time
Why not leave the reading of great books till a great age? Why plague and perplex childhood with complex facts remote from its experience and inapprehensible by its imagination?
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Books are but pictures--the world is their original; to know the former well, we must necessarily have much acquaintance with the colors and shades of the latter.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
He who possesses good books without gaining any profit from them, is like an ass that carries a rich burden and feeds upon thistles.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Bog-lights, vapours of mysticism, psychic overtones, soul orgies, wailings among the shadows, weird gnosticisms, veils and tissues of words, gibbering subjectivisms, gropings and maunderings, ontological fantasies, pan-psychic hallucinations--this is the stuff, the phantasms of hope, that fills your book shelves.
JACK LONDON
John Barleycorn
Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.
UMBERTO ECO
The Name of the Rose
My last refuge, my books: simple pleasures, like finding wild onions by the side of the road, or requited love.
TRACY LETTS
August: Osage Country
Reading useless books is like sowing bad seed--your trouble does not reward you.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims