Quotes About Books

All men must die, it was their single common heritage. But a book need never die and should not be killed; books were the immortal part of man.

The room was small, but as neat as his necktie and as clean as his collar. The fireplace was swept; the floor was bare and polished. Books crowded bookshelves in every possible space. One corner was filled by an elderly flat-top desk; the papers on it were neatly in order. Near it, on its own stand, was a small electric calculator. To her right, french windows gave out on a tiny porch over the garage. Beyond it she could see the sprawling city, where a few neon signs were already blinking.

Dad would haul down a book and we'd look it up. Then he would try four or five more with other opinions. Dad doesn't hold with the idea that it-must-be-true-or-they-wouldn't-have-printed-it; he doesn't consider any opinion sacred—it shocked me the first time he took out a pen and changed something in one of my math books.

Baggage included a tossed salad of books as well as hundreds of the more usual film spools. The entire family, save the twins, tended to be old-fashioned about books; they liked books with covers, volumes one could hold in the lap. Film spools were not quite the same.

It is a well-known idea, not just among mystics, but among modern psychologists, that the sad person lives in a sad world, the angry person in an angry world, etc. Then the sad person reads sad books and the angry person reads angry books? Even if those books seem funny and optimistic, say, to other readers?

Milton said once, poetically, that whoever murders a book, murders a man. Psychologists would mostly agree that that is symbolically true. Destroying a book, like the psychotic behavior of slashing a photograph, expresses rage at the person who wrote the book or the person in the photo. One cannot help wondering, at this point, about those who burned the books of Dr. Reich or conspired to suppress the books of Dr. Velikovsky.

These Rationalist robots are also very uncomfortable with the newer circuits — and some of them spend most of their lives writing articles and books devoted to "proving" that the newer circuits do not exist and that all scientists who have recorded the behavior of these newer circuits are liars, fools, bunglers, charlatans or some manner of Damned Heretics.

Medieval Idolatry consisted of metaphors that were called Revealed Truth. Modern Idolatry consists of metaphors that are called Objective Truth. In both cases human linguistic structures — complicated primate chatterings — have, in effect, become Gods, and whoever questions them is considered a blasphemer and the priests seek to destroy the impiety. That's how books get burned, in Florence in 1300 (or in New York in 1956, as we shall see).

You hate people. Because, really, you're afraid of them, aren't you? Always have been, ever since you were a little tyke. Rather snuggle up in a chair under the lamp and read. You did it thirty years ago, and you're still doing it now. Hiding away under the covers of a book.

Some books are lies frae end to end, And some great lies were never penn'd...

For it is the books you have read, as much as the people you have met, that constitute autobiography.

spent his adult life concerned much more with the imperfections of American society than with America's place in the world. Books are misused when the reader lacks context.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn

The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.

We go to school to learn what books to read for the rest of our lives.

There is nothing in your budget for joy. No books, no flowers, no music, not even a cold beer. And there is nothing in your budget to give away to someone else. We don't help people who don't have better values than you do.

I never read any treatises on strategy. . . . When we fight, we do not take any books with us. MAO TSE-TUNG, 1893–1976

I wished I could be alone in my room, with my books, away from these people.

You know the old bit, he said. You're on a deserted island. You can have five books. Which do you choose? I never thought I'd actually have to.

I know. I know. But he's always buried in those books or shuffling around the house like he's lost in some dream. And? I wasn't like that. Baba sounded frustrated, almost angry. Rahim Khan laughed. Children aren't colouring books. You don't get to fill them with your favourite colours.

That's your business, isn't it, cousin? To make nothing your business. Even your own sons going to war. How I pleaded with you. But you buried your nose in those cursed books and let our sons go like they were a pair of haramis.

Kata-katanya adalah hukum, dan jika seseorang membutuhkan sedikit pengetahuan hukum, maka pelindung buku-buku jari bajanya bisa menjadi alat mengajar yang tepat.

O poveste trista. - Cartile bune-s facute din povesti triste. - Da, asa-i.

She cherished her spiritual books and doesn't deny the debt contracted from some of them. -- Kieran Kavanaugh regarding Teresa of Avila