Quotes
Quotes about Books
Next o'er his books his eyes began to roll, In pleasing memory of all he stole; How here he sipp'd, how there he plunder'd snug, And suck'd all o'er like an industrious bug.
Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books.
Ah, yet, e'er I descend to th' grave, May I a small House and a large Garden have. And a few Friends, and many Books both true, Both wise, and both delightful too. And since Love ne'er will from me flee, A mistress moderately fair, And good as Guardian angels are, Only belov'd and loving me.
Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school: and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and, contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper mill.
Proverbs like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions.
The revolutions of thought which shape the basic outlook of an age are not disseminated through text-books- they spread like epidemics, through contamination by invisible agents and innocent germ carriers, by the most varied forms of contact, or simply by breathing the common air.
The burning of an author's books, imprisonment for opinion's sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time.
Yon second-hand bookseller is second to none in the worth of the treasures which he dispenses.
If the bookseller happens to desire a privilege for his merchandise, whether he is selling Rabelais or the Fathers of the Church, the magistrate grants the privilege without answering for the contents of the book. - Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire),
In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across the Charles river when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.
If we encountered a man or rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read. - Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas: he that reads books of science, though without any desire fixed of improvement, will grow more knowing; he that entertains himself with moral or religious treatises, will imperceptibly advance in goodness; the ideas which are often offered to the mind, will at last find a lucky moment when it is disposed to receive them.
I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me. - Charles Lamb (used pseudonym Elia),
Night after night, He sat and bleared his eyes with books.
We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are they are they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent being toward God.
All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.
Starres are poore books, and oftentimes do misse; This book of starres lights to eternal blisse.
The gentleman is not in your books. -Much Ado about Nothing. Act i. Sc. 1.
Small have continual plodders ever won Save base authority from others' books. These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights That give a name to every fixed star Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk and wot not what they are. -Love's Labour 's Lost. Act i. Sc. 1.
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish all the world. -Love's Labour 's Lost. Act iv. Sc. 3.
Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. -As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 1.
The silent influence of books, is a mighty power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them known only to those who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they yet set in action countless multitudes, and change the order of nations.
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
And I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again.
