BOOK QUOTES
quotations about books
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Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.
JOHN MILTON, Areopagitica
- A man who keeps a diary pays,
- Due toll to many tedious days;
- But life becomes eventful—then,
- His busy hand forgets the pen.
- Most books, indeed, are records less
- Of fulness than of emptiness.
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM, A Diary
A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
JOHN MILTON, Areopagitica
Books are not seldom talismans and spells.
We go to a book as Narcissus went to the fountain, see ourselves therein, and are enamored.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
What traitors books can be! You think they're backing you up, and they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives.
RAY BRADBURY, Fahrenheit 451
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason--they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
The plainest row of books that cloth or paper ever covered is more significant of refinement than the most elaborately carved furniture.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.
GEORGE ORWELL, Confessions of a Book Reviewer
'Tis the good reader that makes the good book.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Society and Solitude
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
What I look for most in the books I read is a sense of consciousness. It's so I know that I've lived. At the end, I can say, "Yes, I have been here--I was here, and I was paying attention."
LILI TAYLOR, O Magazine, Aug. 2006
- Wise books
- For half the truths they hold are honoured tombs.
GEORGE ELIOT, The Spanish Gypsy
Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI, Eragon
I'm much more willing to buy a novel electronically by someone I don't know. Because if halfway through I think, I don't really like this, I can just stop. I can't throw books out, even if I think they're crummy. I feel like I've got to give it to the library. I've got to loan it to somebody, or I keep it on my shelf. It's like a plant.
SUSAN ORLEAN, Newsweek, Jul. 13, 2009
A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
THOMAS CARLYLE, speech in support of the London Library, 1840
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
Books were the sustenance of God. And His munitions.
RÉGIS DEBRAY, God: An Itinerary
Books! The chosen depositories of the thoughts, the opinions, and the aspirations of mighty intellects; like wondrous mirrors that have caught and fixed bright images of souls that have passed away; like magic lyres, whose masters have bequeathed them to the world, and which yet, of themselves, ring with unforgotten music, while the hands that touched their chords have crumbled into dust. Books! they are the embodiments and manifestations of departed minds--the living organs through which those who are dead yet speak to us.
E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words
A book is a garden; a book is an orchard; a book is a storehouse; a book is a party. It is company by the way; it is a counselor; it is a multitude of counselors.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Good books are to the young mind what the warming sun and the refreshing rain of spring are to the seeds which have lain dormant in the frosts of winter. They are more, for they may save from that which is worse than death, as well as bless with that which is better than life.
God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distand and the dead.... They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society ... of the best and greatest of our race.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING, Thoughts
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
A book is like a money-changer: it pays you back in another form what you brint to it.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding--which is the term for the stitching and glue that holds the pages together--blacken and curl as the flames do their wicked work. When someone is burning a book, they are showing utter contempt for all of the thinking that produced its ideas, all of the labor that went into its words and sentences, and all of the trouble that befell the author ...
DANIEL HANDLER (as Lemony Snicket), The Penultimate Peril
Reading useless books is like sowing bad seed--your trouble does not reward you.
It is with books as with new acquaintances. At first we are highly delighted, if we find a general agreement--if we are pleasantly moved on any of the chief sides of our existence. With a closer acquaintance differences come to light; and then reasonable conduct mainly consists in not shrinking back at once, as may happen in youth, but in keeping firm hold of the things in which we agree, and being quite clear about the things in which we differ, without on that account desiring any union.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
The history of books shows the humblest origin of some of the most valued, wrought as these were out of obscure materials by persons whose names thereafter became illustrious. The thumbed volumes, now so precious to thousands, were compiled from personal experiences and owe their interest to touches of inspiration of which the writer was less author than amanuensis, himself the voiced word of life for all times.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT, Table Talk
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
The Book: Man's Chief Weapon Against Tedium.
GARRISON KEILLOR, "How I Spent My Winter Vacation," Salon.com, Jan. 5, 2010
There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN, A Soviet Heretic
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