An aphorism is nothing else but the slightest
QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON BOOKS 3
For a good book has this quality, that it is not merely a petrifaction of its author, but that once it has been tossed behind, like Deucalion's little stone, it acquires a separate and vivid life of its own.
Caroline Lejeune (1897-1973, British film critic)
For a good book has this quality, that it is not merely a petrifaction of its author, but that once it has been tossed behind, like Deucalion's little stone, it acquires a separate and vivid life of its own.
Caroline Lejeune (1897-1973, British film critic)
I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read, but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.
Ghita Levine
A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.
Georg C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799, German physicist, satirist)
Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouse holes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.
Georg C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799, German physicist, satirist)
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
Georg C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799, German physicist, satirist)
The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865, American President (16th))
Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
John Locke (1632-1704, British philosopher)
I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1819-1892, American poet)
Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings -- as some savage tribes determine the power of muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1819-1892, American poet)
All books are either dreams or swords.
Amy Lowell (1874-1925, American poet, critic)
For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.
Amy Lowell (1874-1925, American poet, critic)
What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us.
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891, American poet, critic, editor)
The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.
Martin Luther (1483-1546, German leader of the protestant reformation)
A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.
Hugh MacLennan (1907-1990, Canadian novelist, essayist)
Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.
Stephane Mallarme (1842-1898, French symbolist poet)
A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost always a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.
Horace Mann (1796-1859, American educator)
The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923, New Zealand-born British author)
To read too many books is harmful.
Zedong Mao (1893-1976, Founder of the People's Republic of China)
Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.
Anthony Marcel
Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876, British writer, social critic)
From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
Groucho Marx (1895-1977, American comic actor)
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx (1895-1977, American comic actor)
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965, British novelist, playwright)
What is important is not to be able to read rapidly, but to be able to decide what not to read.
James T. Mccay
Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.
Richard McKenna
A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new.
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980, Canadian communications theorist)
The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books, is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956, American editor, author, critic, humorist)
There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956, American editor, author, critic, humorist)
There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956, American editor, author, critic, humorist)
A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950, American poet)
A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there -- that of the pulse, the heart beat.
Henry Miller (1891-1980, American author)
All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet -- if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.
Henry Miller (1891-1980, American author)
Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth, a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.
Henry Miller (1891-1980, American author)
A good book is the precious life-blood of the master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose for a life beyond.
John Milton (1608-1674, British poet)
Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a certain potency of life in them, to be as active as the soul whose progeny they are; they preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of the living intellect that bred them.
John Milton (1608-1674, British poet)
Deep versed in books and shallow in himself.
John Milton (1608-1674, British poet)
Books and marriage go ill together.
Jean Baptiste Moliere (1622-1673, French playwright)
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor is any pleasure so lasting.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762, British society figure, letter writer)
Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne (1533-1592, French philosopher, essayist)
The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.
Hannah More (1745-1833, British writer, reformer, philanthropist)
Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.
John Morely
You will find most books worth reading are worth reading twice.
John Morely
A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.
William Murray (1705-1793, American judge)
A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973, Chilean poet)
A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call for a book.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900, German philosopher)
Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book -- I call that vicious!
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900, German philosopher)
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900, German philosopher)
The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662, French scientist, religious philosopher)
Read good, big important things.
Peggy Noonan (1950-, American author, presidential speechwriter)
The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.
George Orwell (1903-1950, British author, "Animal Farm")
This book is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967, American humorous writer)
The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
Theodore Parker (1810-1860, American minister)
Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.
William Penn (1644-1718, British religious leader, founder of Pennsylvania)
Five daily newspapers arrive in my California driveway. The New York times and the Wall Street Journal are supplemented by three local papers. As for magazines, I read, or at least skim, Business Week, Forbes, The Economist, INC; Industry Week, Fortune. Other subscriptions include Sales and Marketing Management, Modern Health Care, Progressive Grocer, High Tech Business, and Sloan Management Review from MIT. I religiously read Business Tokyo, Asia Week, and Far Eastern Economic Review. I glance at Newsweek and Time ... but I devour the New Republic, Policy Review, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Monthly, and Public Interest. How about books? A dozen or more each month.
Thomas J. Peters (1942-, American management consultant, author, lecturer)
I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.
William Lyon Phelps
What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.
Wendell Phillips (1811-1884, American reformer, orator)
No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.
Noah Porter
No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.
Ezra Pound (1885-1972, American poet, critic)
Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.
Ezra Pound (1885-1972, American poet, critic)
With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.
Ezra Pound (1885-1972, American poet, critic)
The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.
American Proverb (Sayings of American origin)
Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest.
English Proverb (Sayings of British origin)
There is no robber worse than a bad book.
Italian Proverb (Sayings of Italian origin)
Books are preserved parts of minds.
Japanese Proverb (Sayings of Japanese origin)
There is no book that contains absolutely nothing bad, and there is no book that contains absolutely nothing good.
Jewish Proverb (Sayings of Jewish origin)
She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full.
Jean Rhys (1894-1979, British author)
She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full.
Jean Rhys (1894-1979, British author)
Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.
Hazel Rochman
Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought.
Henry C. Rogers
Don't just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.
Jim Rohn (American businessman, author, speaker, philosopher) Author's website: www.jimrohn.com
Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.
Jim Rohn (American businessman, author, speaker, philosopher) Author's website: www.jimrohn.com
Miss a meal if you have to, but don't miss a book.
Jim Rohn (American businessman, author, speaker, philosopher) Author's website: www.jimrohn.com
The book you don't read won't help.
Jim Rohn (American businessman, author, speaker, philosopher) Author's website: www.jimrohn.com
The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962, American First Lady, columnist, lecturer, humanitarian)
Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.
Jean Rostand (1894-1977, French biologist, writer)
The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.
Jean Rostand (1894-1977, French biologist, writer)
In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.
Leo C. Rosten (1908-1997, Polish-born American political scientist)
One half who graduate from college never read another book.
Herbert True
People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.
Mark Twain (1835-1910, American humorist, writer)
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
Salman Rushdie (1948-, Indian-born British author)
The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it -- when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.
Salman Rushdie (1948-, Indian-born British author)
A book worth reading is worth buying.
John Ruskin (1819-1900, British critic, social theorist)
Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
John Ruskin (1819-1900, British critic, social theorist)
Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.
John Ruskin (1819-1900, British critic, social theorist)
How long would most people look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?
John Ruskin (1819-1900, British critic, social theorist)
To use books rightly is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.
John Ruskin (1819-1900, British critic, social theorist)
You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.
John Ruskin (1819-1900, British critic, social theorist)
What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
J. D. Salinger (1919-, American author)
A library is thought in cold storage.
Herbert Samuel (1870-1963, British statesman, philosophical writer)
I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.
B. K. Sandwell
Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can't expect an angel to look out.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860, German philosopher)
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them…
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860, German philosopher)
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946, Anglo-American essayist, aphorist)
Weak men are the worse for the good sense they read in books because it furnisheth them only with more matter to mistake.
George Savile
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860, German philosopher)
Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860, German philosopher)
I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.
Charles de Secondat
Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.
Giorgos Seferis
O, let my books be then the eloquence and dumb presages of my speaking breast.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616, British poet, playwright, actor)
|
