Quotes
Quotes about Books
The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.
Some on commission, some for the love of learning, some because they have nothing better to do or because they hope these walls of books will deaden the drumming of the demon in their ears.
There are times when I think that the ideal library is composed solely of reference books. They are like understanding friends-always ready to change the subject when you have had enough of this or that.
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.
Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends.
Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners.
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what other men say in whole books - what other men do not say in whole books.
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
Damn all expurgated books; the dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.
Feast of Chad, Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary, 672 Continuing a short series of testimonies on the Scriptures: It is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it--this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost: and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true.
Continuing a short series of testimonies on the Scriptures: In holy Scripture is fully contained what we ought to do, and what to eschew; what to believe, what to love, and what to look for at God's hands at length. In these Books we shall find the father from whom, the son by whom, and the holy Ghost in whom all things have their being and keeping up, and these three persons to be but one God, and one substance. Read [Holy Scripture] humbly with a meek and lowly heart, to the intent you may glorify God, and not your self, with the knowledge of it: and read it not without daily praying to God, that he would direct your reading to good effect: and take upon you to expound it no further than you can plainly understand it. For (as Saint Augustine says) the knowledge of holy Scripture is a great, large, and a high place, but the door is very low, so that the high & arrogant man cannot run in: but he must stoop low, and humble himself, that shall enter into it... The humble man may search any truth boldly in the Scripture, without any danger of error. (Continued tomorrow) ... "A Fruitful exhortation to the reading of holy Scripture", from the Anglican Homilies [1562] March 4, 2001 Commemoration of Felix, Bishop, Apostle to the East Angles, 647 Continuing a short series of testimonies on the Scriptures: Scripture in some places is easy, and in some places hard to be understood. This have I said, as touching the fear to read, through ignorance of the person. And concerning the hardness of Scripture, he that is so weak that he is not able to [eat] strong meat, yet he may suck the sweet and tender milk, and defer the rest, until he wax stronger, and come to more knowledge. For God receives the learned and unlearned, and casts away none, but [does not discriminate]. And the Scripture is full as well of low valleys, plain ways, and easy for every man to use, and to walk in: as also of high hills & mountains, which few men can climb unto. ... "A Fruitful exhortation to the reading of holy Scripture", from the Anglican Homilies [1562] March 5, 2001 Continuing a short series of testimonies on the Scriptures: We are to believe and follow Christ in all things, including his words about Scripture. And this means that Scripture is to be for us what it was to him: the unique, authoritative, and inerrant Word of God, and not merely a human testimony to Christ, however carefully guided and preserved by God. If the Bible is less than this to us, we are not fully Christ's disciples.
Feast of Henry Martyn, Translator of the Scriptures, Missionary in India & Persia, 1812 I hear no one boast, that he hath a knowledge of the Scriptures, but that he owneth a Bible written in golden characters. And tell me then, what profiteth this? The Holy Scriptures were not given to us that we should enclose them in books, but that we should engrave them upon our hearts.
We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed...
There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas... that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.
The coming of the printing press must have seemed as if it would turn the world upside down in the way it spread and, above all, democratized knowledge. Provide you could pay and read, what was on the shelves in the new bookshops was yours for the taking. The speed with which printing presses and their operators fanned out across Europe is extraordinary. From the single Mainz press of 1457, it took only twenty-three years to establish presses in 110 towns: 50 in Ita!0 in Germany, 9 in France, 8 in Spain, 8 in Holland, 4 in England, and so on.
To the right, books; to the left, a tea-cup. In front of me, the fireplace; behind me, the post. There is no greater happiness than this.
A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years' study of books.
There is nothing that strengthens a nation like reading of a nation's own history, whether that history is recorded in books or embodied in customs, institutions and monuments.
Films and gramophone records, music, books and buildings show clearly how vigorously a man's life and work go on after his "death," whether we feel it or not, whether we are aware of the individual names or not. There is no such thing as death according to our view!
It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education is a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.
I am Envy. I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned.
A face that had a story to tell. How different faces are in this particular! Some of them speak not. They are books in which not a line is written, save perhaps a date.
In the very books in which philosophers bid us scorn fame, they inscribe their names.
