Quotes About Books

Waxman had books: three walls of books, which started one shelf off the deck in case of damp or storm, a tactic learned the hard way, the most bitter lesson being a water-damaged first edition of Ulysses. The Irish version.

Isn't reading a kind of preparation for life?' But life is composed of things other than books. It is as if an athlete, on entering the stadium, were to complain that he's not outside exercising.This was the goal of your exercise, of your weights, your practice ring and your training partners.

Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.

It is not reasonings that are wanted now,' he says, 'for there are books stuffed full of stoical reasonings. What is wanted, then? The man who shall apply them; whose actions may bear testimony to his doctrines. Assume this character for me, that we may no longer make use in the schools of the examples of the ancients, but may have some examples of our own.

Lisait-il vraiment? Son oeil plissait, egare, sur les mots couches; il ne les reveillait pas, il les laissait dormir dans le troupeau du paragraphe. Il etait plus un gardien de livres qu'un lecteur.

A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic can pass a bar.

Professors of literature collect books the way a ship collects barnacles, without seeming effort.

At last she said: 'I can help you, I know I can, I will. But it is a big task for a small person. Do children in your world usually perform such tasks?' Nathan thought of all the books he had ever read, of the Pevensies, Colin and Susan, Harry Potter, Lyra Belacqua, and a hundred others. 'All the time,' he said.

I don't want to be famous per se, but I want to write books for as long as I can. And I plan on writing a lot.

If I wasn't an actress I'd want to be a writer or else find a job where I got to read books and watch movies all day, everyday, for the rest of my life.

Scriptures: the sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

Une légende court les livres. Elle parle de trois amis, trois persans qui ont marqué, chacun à sa façon, les débuts de notre millénaire : Omar Khayyam qui a observé le monde, Nizam-El Mok qui l'a gouverné, Hassan Sabbah qui l'a terrorisé.

Having read all of whitie's books, I wanted to be an authority on them. Having been taught that art was "what white men do," I almost became one, to have a go at it.

It is madness to think that knowing a language and reading a few books can create allegiances between people. Thoughts, books, ideas, words – if anything, they make you more alone, because they destroy whatever instinctive loyalties you may once have possessed.

what does the computer know of the comforting weight of a book in one's lap? Or of the excitement that comes from finding a set of books, dusty and tucked away in the back corner of some store? The computer can only reproduce the information in a book, and never the joyful experience of reading it.

The books that charmed us in youth recall the delight ever afterwards; we are hardly persuaded there are any like them, any deserving our equal affections.

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.

Observation more than books and experience more than persons, are the prime educators.

Of books in our time the variety is so voluminous, and they follow so fast from the press, that one must be a swift reader to acquaint himself even with their titles, and wise to discern what are worth reading.

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.

If you steal from one book you are condemned as a plagiarist, but if you steal from ten books you are considered a scholar, and if you steal from thirty or forty books, a distinguished scholar.

When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that a copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf-life in some corner on an out-of-the-way library somehwere in Reykjavik, Valladolid or Vancouver.

Literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.