Quotes About Books

Sì in questo mondo ho visto accadere tantissime cose. Ho assistito ai peggiori cataclismi e lavorato per gli uomini più scellerati. Ma ci sono stati anche altri momenti. Ci sono storie (una manciata, come ho già detto) alle quali consento di distrarmi dalla fatica, come faccio con i colori. Le raccolgo nei luoghi più disparati e improbabili, e mi assicuro di non dimenticarmene mai, mentre lavoro. La Ladra di Libri è una di queste storie.

I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don't know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

Richard's bookshelves weren't alphabetized. He never had time to alphabetize them. He was always too busy- looking for books he couldn't find.

read so much about the grieving process over the past month. Devoured articles on the Internet, ordered books. All of them were clear that there was no timeline for grief. They were specific about symptoms of grief—the sensations of choking, shortness of breath, feelings of emptiness, endless crying. But nothing warned her that when she wasn't experiencing those symptoms of anguish, all that was left was a sense of meaninglessness. A great, vast gray space of nothingness. Limbo.

Living in a house with a large library," she said, "is a little like living in heaven

society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from

I do not think that life has any joy to offer so complete, so soul-filling as that which comes upon the imaginative lad, whose spare time is limited, but who is able to snuggle down into a corner with his book, knowing that the next hour is all his own. And how vivid and fresh it all is!

To want to meet an author because you like his books is as ridiculous as wanting to meet the goose because you like paté de foie gras.

MONCEAU: It was an absolutely idiotic accident. I was rooming with another actor, a gentile. And he kept warning me to get out. But naturally one doesn't just give up a role like that. But one night I let myself be influenced by him. He pointed out that I had a number of books which were on the forbidden list—of Communist literature—I mean things like Sinclair Lewis, and Thomas Mann, and even a few things by Friedrich Engels, which everybody was reading at one time.

Shakespeare's lines are a nursery of titles for other, better writers: Pale Fire, Exit Ghost, Infinite Jest, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Sound and the Fury, Unnatural Acts, The Quick and the Dead, Against the Polack, To Be or Not to Be, Band of Brothers, Casual Slaughters. At the very least, I have never named one of my books after his stuff.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.

Scholars are those who have read in books, but thinkers, men of genius, world-enlighteners, and reformers of the human race are those who have read directly in the book of the world.

buying books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

A constant flow of thoughts expressed by other people can stop and deaden your own thought and your own initiative…. That is why constant learning softens your brain…. Stopping the creation of your own thoughts to give room for the thoughts from other books reminds me of Shakespeare's remark about his contemporaries who sold their land in order to see other countries.

The result is that much reading robs the mind of all elasticity, as the continual pressure of a weight does a spring, and that the surest way of never having any thoughts of your own is to pick up a book every time you have a free moment. The practice of doing this is the reason erudition makes most men duller and sillier than they are by nature and robs their writings of all effectiveness: they are in Pope's words: For ever reading, never to be read.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them l

How very learned many a man would be if he knew everything that was in his own books! The

You can never read bad literature too little, nor good literature too much.

It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of its contents.

Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance.

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them.