Quotes About Books

The books—the generous friends who met me without suspicion—the merciful masters who never used me ill! The only years of my life that I can look back on with something like pride... Early and late, through the long winter nights and the quiet summer days, I drank at the fountain of knowledge, and never wearied of the draught.

Geschichten in Geschichten in Geschichten. Man weiß nie, wo eine endet und eine andere beginnt! In Wahrheit fließen alle ineinander. Nur in Büchern sind sie säuberlich getrennt.

Stories within stories within stories. You never know where one ends and another begins! In truth, they all flow into one another. It's only in books that they're clearly divided.

The conversations rests uneasily; one doesn't expect good-byes to be burdened by such trivialities. This is not how it is in the books, he thinks, or in the theater, and he feels the need to speak of mission, of duty, of love. They reach home and close the door and he doesn't drop her hand. Where speech fails, touch compensates.

He always made a point of mentioning that he was reading the Odyssey on his iPad. Books are an obsolete technology! he'd say. Get with the times. Homer on an iPad, now that's an adventure.

whose four-story limestone mansion at 12 West 49th was sufficient for himself and his wife, while the neighboring houses at numbers 10 and 14 provided him with protection against development from the east and, to his west, a place to store his books and paintings.

Que des livres puissent à ce point bouleverser notre conscience et laisser le monde aller au pire, voilà de quoi rester muet.

Que unos libros puedan alterar hasta tal punto nuestra conciencia y dejar que el mundo siga de mal en peor, es algo que deja sin palabras.

Il sapere è innanzitutto carnale. Le nostre orecchie e i nostri occhi lo captano, la nostra bocca lo trasmette. Certo, ci viene dai libri, ma i libri escono da noi. Fa rumore, un pensiero, e il piacere di leggere è un retaggio del bisogno di dire.

What we need to understand is that books weren't written so that young people could write essays about them, but so that they could read them if they really wanted to. Knowledge, academic track record, career, and social life are one thing. Our intimacy and cultural awareness as readers are quite another.

We human beings build houses because we're alive, but we write books because we're mortal. We live in groups because we're sociable, but we read because we know we're alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one's place, but that no one can replace either.

The children became their reciprocal angels: readers.

If reading isn't about communication, it is, in the end, about sharing. But a deferred and fiercely selective kind of sharing.

Rather than allowing a book's intelligence to speak through our mouths, we replace it with our own intelligence as we talk about it. Rather than acting as emissary for the book, we become guardians of the temple, boasting of its wonders in the very words that slam shut it's doors: Reading matters! Reading matters!

Quel che noi leggiamo, lo taciamo. Il piacere del libro letto lo teniamo spesso gelosamente segreto. Sia perchè non vi vediamo materia di conversazione, sia perchè prima di poterne dire una parola dobbiamo lasciar fare al tempo la sua splendida opera di distillazione.

Non sapevo, leggendoli, che mi istruivo, che quei libri avrebbero risvegliato in me una fame che sarebbe sopravvissuta persino al loro oblio.

Il verbo leggere non sopporta l'imperativo.

Pochi oggetti risvegliano quanto il libro il sentimento di assoluta proprietà.

Di tutto, ai libri facciamo subire di tutto. Ma solo il modo in cui gli altri li maltrattano ci ferisce...

Et par dessus tout nous lisons contre la mort

He was an echo chamber for all books, the physical incarnation of words, the book made human.

Quando si è assaggiato il fascino e il conforto della grande letteratura, se ne vuole sempre di più. Si comincia allora a leggere per proprio conto...

Leggere, si impara a scuola. Quanto ad amare leggere...

Appena un libro finisce nelle nostre mani, è nostro, proprio come dicono i bambini: - È il mio libro - ... parte integrante di me stesso. E forse questa la ragione per cui così difficilmente restituiamo i libri che ci vengono prestati. Non esattamente un furto... (no, no, non siamo dei ladri; no...), diciamo, un passaggio di proprietà, o meglio, un trasferimento di sostanza.