An aphorism is nothing else but the slightest
QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON BOOKS 2
This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing.
Henry Miller (1891-1980, American author) There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870, British novelist)
He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886, American poet)
There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing poetry.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886, American poet)
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.
Walt Disney (1901-1966, American artist, film producer)
Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881, British statesman, Prime Minister)
There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.
Isaac Disraeli (1766-1848, British critic, historian)
You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930, British author, "Sherlock Holmes")
We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.
Tryon Edwards (1809-1894, American theologian)
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.
George Eliot (1819-1880, British novelist)
Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Never read any book that is not a year old.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
Desiderius Erasmus (c.1466-1536, Dutch humanist)
When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
Cliff Fadiman (American writer)
Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.
William Faulkner (1897-1962, American novelist)
The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.
William Faulkner (1897-1962, American novelist)
If the riches of the Indies, or the crowns of all the kingdom of Europe, were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading, I would spurn them all.
Francois de Salignac Fenelon (1651-1715, French writer)
There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754, British novelist, dramatist)
We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754, British novelist, dramatist)
I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.
Zelda Fitzgerald (1900-1948, American writer)
Read in order to live.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880, French novelist)
One always tends to over-praise a long book, because one has got through it.
Edward M. Forster (1879-1970, British novelist, essayist)
The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
Edward M. Forster (1879-1970, British novelist, essayist)
The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
Edward M. Forster (1879-1970, British novelist, essayist)
The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
Anatole France (1844-1924, French writer)
Read much, but not many books.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790, American scientist, publisher, diplomat)
Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790, American scientist, publisher, diplomat)
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
Robert Frost (1875-1963, American poet)
A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
Margaret Witter Fuller (1810-1850, American writer, lecturer)
It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along the shore.
Margaret Witter Fuller (1810-1850, American writer, lecturer)
A book that is shut is but a block.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661, British clergyman, author)
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
W. Fusselman
When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.
Harold S. Geneen (1910-1977, American accountant, industrialist)
Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794, British historian)
My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794, British historian)
I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.
George Robert Gissing (1857-1903, British novelist, critic, essayist)
Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)
As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)
I read part of it all the way through.
Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974, American film producer, founder of MGM)
Learning to read has been reduced to a process of mastering a series of narrow, specific, hierarchical skills. Where armed-forces recruits learn the components of a rifle or the intricacies of close order drill "by the numbers," recruits to reading learn its mechanics sound by sound and word by word.
Jacquelyn Gross
The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-, American author)
Thank you for sending me a copy of your book -- I'll waste no time reading it.
Moses Hadas (1900-1966, American classicist and translator)
Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.
John Harington
If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830, British essayist)
He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.
Sir Arthur Helps (1813-1875, British historian, novelist, essayist)
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961, American writer)
Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894, American author, wit, poet)
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894, American author, wit, poet)
The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894, American author, wit, poet)
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
The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, "The medicines of the soul."
Paxton Hood
My books kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon.
Thomas Hood (1799-1845, British poet and humorist)
A book might be written on the injustice of the just.
Anthony Hope (1863-1933, British writer)
Books in a large university library system: 2, 000 Books in an average large city library: 1, 000 Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30, 000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20, 000.
Lois Horowitz
The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
William Dean Howells (1837-1920, American novelist, critic)
This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.
Elbert Hubbard (1859-1915, American author, publisher)
It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885, French poet, dramatist, novelist)
The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824, French moralist)
There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824, French moralist)
To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885, French poet, dramatist, novelist)
It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.
Leigh Hunt (1784-1859, British poet, essayist)
A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963, British author)
Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.
Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895, British biologist, educator)
The newest books are those that never grow old.
George Holbrook Jackson (1874-1948, British essayist, literary historian,)
Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.
Holbrook Jackson
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
Henry James (1843-1916, American author)
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826, American President (3rd))
I cannot live without books.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826, American President (3rd))
A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784, British author)
Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784, British author)
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784, British author)
You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.
Charles "Tremendous" Jones (American motivational speaker, author)
There be some men are born only to suck out the poison of books.
Ben Jonson (1573-1637, British dramatist, poet)
One man is as good as another until he has written a book.
Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893, British scholar)
The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine -- but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.
Sir Arthur Keith
Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.
Thomas a Kempis (1379-1471, German monk, mystic, religious writer)
To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations -- such is pleasure beyond compare.
Yoshida Kenko
I am a part of everything that I have read.
John Kieran
Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message to us from the dead -- from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.
Charles Kingsley (1819-1875, British author, clergyman)
We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things -- the teacher of all truth.
Charles Kingsley (1819-1875, British author, clergyman)
You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.
Peter Kump
When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.
Jean De La Bruyere (1645-1696, French classical writer)
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891, American poet, critic, editor)
Borrowers of books -- those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
Charles Lamb (1775-1834, British essayist, critic)
He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.
Charles Lamb (1775-1834, British essayist, critic)
I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.
Charles Lamb (1775-1834, British essayist, critic)
What is reading, but silent conversation.
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864, British poet, essayist)
After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else.
D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930, British author)
I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.
D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930, British author)
One sheds one's sicknesses in books -- repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.
D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930, British author)
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
Stephen B. Leacock (1869-1944, Canadian humorist, economist)
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
Harper Lee (1926-, American author)
You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.
Spike Lee (1956-, American film director)
This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing.
Henry Miller (1891-1980, American author)
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