Books Quotes
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.William E. Channing
The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me, by newspapers and the Bible.Van Wyck Brooks
Men do not understand books until they have had a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.Ezra Loomis Pound
There are times when I think that the ideal library is composed solely of reference books. They are like understanding friends - Always ready to meet your mood, always ready to change the subject when you have had enough of this or that.Donald J. Adams
Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people.Heinrich Heine
Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.Ralph Waldo Emerson
The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.Anita Brookne
Books may well be the only true magic.Alice Hoffman
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.Samuel Butle
Read not books alone, but men, and amongst them chiefly thyself. If thou find anything questionable there, use the commentary of a severe friend rather than the gloss of a sweet lipped flatterer; there is more profit in a distasteful truth than in deceitful sweetness.Francis Quarles
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.Thomas Carlyle
Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.Paxton Hood
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.Ralph Waldo Emerson
The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and of elevated opinions.Christopher Dawson
When books are burned in the end people will be burned too.Heinrich Heine
Learning is acquired by reading books, but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various facets of them.Lord Chesterfield
The experience to be gathered from books, Though often valuable, is but of the nature of learning Whereas the experience gained from actual life, Is of the nature of wisdom And a small store of the latter Is worth vastly more than a stock of the former.Samuel Smiles
From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings.Helen Hayes
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.Arthur Schopenhaue
Life - Transforming ideas have always come to me through books.Bell Hooks, O Magazine, December 2003
Nothing, it appears to me is of greater value in a man than the power of judgement and the man who has it may be compared to a chest fulled with books, for he is the son of nature and the father of art.Pietro Aretino
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.Charles W. Eliot, The Happy Life, 1896
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.Sir Francis Bacon
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.Oscar Wilde
Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered.W. H. Auden
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.Arthuer Schopenhaue
Learning is acquired by reading books but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading man, and studying all the various editions of them.Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield
I have given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.Oscar Levant
It does not matter how many books you have, but how good the books are which you have.Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Only those books come down which deserve to last. All the gilt edges, vellum and morocco, all the presentation copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic date.Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.Sir Winston Churchill, My Early Life, 1930
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.Henry David Thoreau
Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.Joseph Addison
Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.Paul Valery
A man loses contact with reality if he is not surrounded by his books.Franois Maurice Mitterrand
Liesure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.Lucius Annaeus Seneca
