Quotes About Books

Le paradis, à n'en pas douter, n'est qu'une immense bibliothèque.

On a shelf in the library are very old books that tell of another past than the one the dreamer has known. Dreams, thoughts and memoires weave a single fabric. The soul dreams and thinks, then it imagines.

We have books whose papers are matted of plants from which spring curious alkaloids, so that the reader, in turning their pages, is taken unaware by bizarre fantasies and chimeric dreams.

We have books here bound in the hides of echidnes, krakens, and beasts so long extinct that those whose studies they are, are for the most part of the opinion that no trace of them survives unfossilized.

Each picture in the room beyond contained a book. Sometimes they were many, or prominent; some I had to study for some time before I saw the corner of a binding thrusting from the pocket of a woman's skirt or realized that some strangely wrought spool held words spun like thread.

Once or twice I saw evidence that rats had been nesting among the books, rearranging them to make snug two and three-level homes for themselves and smearing dung on the covers to form the rude characters of their speech.

Of the trail of ink there is no end,'" Master Ultan told me. "Or so a wise man said. He lived long ago—what would he say if he could see us now? Another said, 'A man will give his life to the turning over of a collection of books,' but I would like to meet the man who could turn over this one, on any topic.

For he would rather have, by his bedside, twenty books, bound in black or red, of Aristotle and his philosophy, than rich robes or costly fiddles or gay harps.

And as for me, though that I konne but lyte, On bokes for to rede I me delyte, And to hem yive I feyth and ful credence, And in myn herte have hem in reverence So hertely, that ther is game noon That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, But yt be seldom on the holyday, Save, certeynly, whan that the month of May Is comen, and that I here the foules synge, And that the floures gynnen for to sprynge, Farewel my bok and my devocioun!

Prefería tener en la cabecera de su cama los 20 libros de Aristóteles encuadernados en negro o en rojo que vestidos lujosos, el violín y el salterio.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read. [As quoted in Literary Censorship in England (in Current Opinion , Vol. 55, No. 5, November 1913)]

Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.

Captain Shotover: How much does your soul eat? Ellie: Oh, a lot. It eats music and pictures and books and mountains and lakes and beautiful things to wear and nice people to be with.

I owe all my originality, such as it is, to my determination not to be a literary man. Instead of belonging to a literary club I belong to a municipal council. Instead of drinking and discussing authors and reviews, I sit on committees with capable practical greengrocers and bootmakers... Keep away from books and from men who get their ideas from books, and your own books will always be fresh.

Spisovate? je ?lovek, ktorému nesta?ia knihy tých druhých.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you wouldn't read yourself.

I shall be so glad if you will tell me what to read. I have been looking into all the books in the library at Offendene, but there is nothing readable. The leaves all stick together and smell musty. I wish I could write books to amuse myself, as you can! How delightful it must be to write books after one's own taste instead of reading other people's! Home-made books must be so nice.

Love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives foreboding. Listen to me, let me supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes, be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be committing this long suicide.

it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid.

Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or listening to the talk of men... it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid... knowledge seemed to him a very superficial affair, easily mastered: judging from the conversations of his elders he had apparently got already more than was necessary for mature life.

The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did not belong to them.

Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or listening to the talk of men. All this was true of him at ten years of age; he had then read through "Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea," which was neither milk for babes, nor any chalky mixture meant to pass for milk, and it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid.

it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid. His school studies had not much modified that opinion...

Nay, Miss, I'n got to keep count o' the flour an' corn; I can't do wi' knowin' so many things besides my work. That's what brings folks to the gallows,–knowin' everything but what they'n got to get their bread by. An' they're mostly lies, I think, what's printed i' the books: them printed sheets are, anyhow, as the men cry i' the streets.