Quotes About Books

Besides that, Sebastian liked books —all kinds. He loved fiction, non-fiction, big picture art books, the smell, the feel, and the potential to sit down with a book, become lost within it and only surface hours later when you needed to pee. Books were the bestest of best friends —and they never bitched if you forgot their birthdays or decided not to call them for a month.

Besides the alternate universe offered by a book, the quiet space of a museum was my favorite place to go. My mom said I was an escapist at heart . . . that I preferred imaginary worlds to the real one. It's true that I've always been able to yank myself out of this world and plunge myself into another.

Demeter's Grove was a "new age" kind of store, as they were calling them these days, and Autumn sold everything from incense and candles to especially elemental stones to clothing to books. She was used to inviting all kinds of strangers and friends into her kitchen; demonstrations- cooking, baking, tincture or poultice-making- were another dimension of her business.

Books are challenging and inspirational to me.

In antiquity, the Gospel was not read by most people, in part because copying books was expensive, and in part because most people were illiterate. Instead, the Gospel was performed. We can picture the speaker, demonstrating angelic exasperation, wondering how he will deal with this obtuse priest.

Como ler - essa é uma grande questão que vamos encontrando a toda hora nesse mergulho pelos livros essenciais. Ler criticamente é uma das respostas. Significa que não se lê para concordar servilmente em atitude reverente, mas também não se lê para discordar e refutar num eterno desafio.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait." ( About Books; Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling , New York Times, February 22, 1987)

The most dangerous part of lending books lies in the returning. At such times, friendships hang by a thread. I look for agony, ecstasy, for tears, transfiguration, trembling hands, a broken voice - but what the borrower usually says is, "I enjoyed it." I enjoyed it - as if that were what books were for.

The moment a book is lent I begin to miss it.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like and ancestral portrait.

The thought of people reading in the sun, on a beach, tempts me to recommend dark books, written in the shadow of loneliness, despair, and death. Let these revelers feel a chill as they loll on their towels.

Love, truth, beauty, wisdom, and consolation against death. - Anatole Broyard in his dislike of "Lending Books" from editor Rabinowitz's collection "A Passion for Books

History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.

I do not know any reading more easy, more fascinating, more delightful than a catalogue.

Never lend books - nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me.

As to the kind of truth one finds in books, it is a truth that enables us sometimes to discern what things are not, without ever enabling us to discover what they are.

Each one dreams the dream of life in his own way. I have dreamed it in my library; and when the hour shall come in which I must leave this world, may it please God to take me from my ladder—from before my shelves of books!...

The history books which contain no lies are extremely tedious

This book bore the label R>3214 VIII/2. And this painful truth was suddenly borne in upon the mind of Monsieur Sariette: to wit, that the most scientific system of numbering will not help to find a book if the book is no longer in its place.

What a lot of books!" she screamed. "And have you really read them all, Monsieur Bonnard?" "Alas! I have," I replied, "and that is just the reason that I do not know anything; for there is not a single one of those books which does not contradict some other book; so that by the time one has read them all one does not know what to think about anything. That is just my condition, Madame.

Nevertheless, I am greatly moved by my passions at times, and it has more than once been my fate to lose my sleep for the sake of a few pages written by some forgotten monk or printed by some humble apprentice of Peter Schoeffer. And if these fierce enthusiasms are slowly being quenched in me, it is only because I am being slowly quenched myself. Our passions are ourselves. My old books are me. I am just as old and thumbworn as they are.

Those who read many books are like the eaters of hashish. They live in a dream. The subtle poison that penetrates their brain renders them insensible to the real world and makes them prey of terrible or de lightful phantoms. Books are the opium of the Occident. They devour us. A day is coming on which we shall all be keepers of libraries, and that will be the end.