An aphorism is nothing else but the slightest
QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON BOOKS 4
How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books. Quick, quick! Fling "Peregrine Pickle" under the toilette -- throw "Roderick Random" into the closet -- put "The Innocent Adultery" into "The Whole Duty of Man"; thrust "Lord Aimworth" under the sofa! cram "Ovid" behind the bolster; there -- put "The Man of Feeling" into your pocket. Now for them.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)
What is the most precious, the most exciting smell awaiting you in the house when you return to it after a dozen years or so? The smell of roses, you think? No, moldering books.
Andre Sinyavsky
Then I thought of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946, Anglo-American essayist, aphorist)
Live always in the best company when you read.
Sydney Smith (1771-1845, British writer, clergyman)
No furniture is so charming as books.
Sydney Smith (1771-1845, British writer, clergyman)
A multitude of books distracts the mind.
Socrates (BC 469-399, Greek philosopher of Athens)
Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.
Steven Spielberg (1947-, American director, screenwriter)
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch.
Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729, British dramatist, essayist, editor)
A book is like a man -- clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968, American author)
The age of the book is almost gone.
George Steiner (1929-, French-born American critic, novelist)
A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.
Henri B. Stendhal (1783-1842, French writer)
Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.
J. Swartz
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading! Take them out of this book, for instance, you might as well take the book along with them; -- one cold external winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer; -- he steps forth like a bridegroom, -- bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768, British author)
One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768, British author)
One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768, British author)
Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1895, Scottish essayist, poet, novelist)
A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You should live several lives while reading it.
William Styron (1925-, American novelist)
Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed
Sir William Temple (1628-1699, British diplomat, essayist)
Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.
Sir William Temple (1628-1699, British diplomat, essayist)
What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.
Helen Terry
If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
William M. Thackeray (1811-1863, Indian-born British novelist)
Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, American essayist, poet, naturalist)
Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution -- such call I good books.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, American essayist, poet, naturalist)
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. At present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, American essayist, poet, naturalist)
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, American essayist, poet, naturalist)
To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, American essayist, poet, naturalist)
I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.
James Thurber (1894-1961, American humorist, illustrator)
The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.
Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910, Russian novelist, philosopher)
No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
Atwood H. Townsend
An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.
Thomas Traherne (1636-1674, British clergyman, poet, mystic)
Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.
G. M. Trevelyan (1876-1962, British historian)
Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882, British novelist)
Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882, British novelist)
There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?
Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941, Russian poet)
A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.
Mark Twain (1835-1910, American humorist, writer)
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Mark Twain (1835-1910, American humorist, writer)
My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine -- everybody drinks water.
Mark Twain (1835-1910, American humorist, writer)
The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them.
Mark Twain (1835-1910, American humorist, writer)
A wicked book cannot repent.
Author Unknown
Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.
Author Unknown
In any situation, ask yourself: What strengths do I possess that can contribute towards accomplishing something in this situation? Then follow through.
Author Unknown
Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.
Author Unknown
The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.
Author Unknown
Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.
Sir Peregrine Worsthorne (1923-, British journalist)
Choose an author as you choose a friend.
Sir Christopher Wren
Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read.
Author Unknown
Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.
Author Unknown
Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
Raoul Vaneigem (1934-, Belgian situationist philosopher)
All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.
Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778, French historian, writer)
It is much better to be silent than to merely increase the number of bad books.
Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778, French historian, writer)
The multitude of books is making us ignorant.
Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778, French historian, writer)
Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.
William Wycherley (1640-1716, British dramatist)
The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy; The books that people talk about we never can recall; And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.
Carolyn Wells (1870-1942, American author)
Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.
John Wesley (1703-1791, British preacher, founder of Methodism)
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
Jessamyn West (1903-1984, American author)
Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.
Edwin P. Whipple (1819-1886, American essayist)
The words of my book are nothing, the drift of it everything.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892, American poet)
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde (1856-1900, British author, wit)
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything. I've put my genius into my life; I've only put my talent into my works.
Oscar Wilde (1856-1900, British author, wit)
There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.
Oscar Wilde (1856-1900, British author, wit)
Books had instant replay long before televised sports.
Bert Williams
Books bear him up a while, and make him try to swim with bladders of philosophy.
John Wilmot (1647-1680, British courtier, poet)
The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.
Thomas Wolfe (1931-, American author, journalist)
Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941, British novelist, essayist)
Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written.
Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937, Russian writer)
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