best quotations about
Books |
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Quotations
 | As to the book called the bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions and a history of bad times and bad men. — Thomas Paine, 1737-1809, English-American writer 30 likes |
 | If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. — Cicero, 106-43 BC, Roman orator & statesman 22 likes |
 | Buying books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them. — Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, German philosopher 8 likes |
 | Reading is not an end to itself, but a means to an end. — Adolf Hitler, 1889-1945, German dictator 8 likes |
| Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own. — Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, German philosopher 7 likes |
| The art of reading consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting non essentials. — Adolf Hitler, 1889-1945, German dictator 7 likes |
 | There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. — Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer 6 likes |
 | A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. — Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784, English writer 6 likes |
 | Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty. — George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Irish writer, Nobel 1925 5 likes |
| Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad. — George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Irish writer, Nobel 1925 5 likes |
 | Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote. — Lord Chesterfield, 1694-1773, English statesman & writer 5 likes |
 | Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world. — Voltaire, 1694-1778, French philosopher & writer 5 likes |
 | A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742-1799, German author of maxims 5 likes |
 | Madame Bovary is the sexiest book imaginable. The woman’s virtually a nymphomaniac but you won’t find a vulgar word in the entire thing. — Noel Coward, 1899-1973, British playwright 5 likes |
| A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742-1799, German author of maxims 5 likes |
 | A book in which there were no lies would be a curiosity. — Napoleon, 1769-1821, French Emperor 5 likes |
| Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself. — George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Irish writer, Nobel 1925 5 likes |
 | When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness. — Jules Renard, 1864-1910, French writer 4 likes |
 | Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content. — Paul Valery, 1871-1945, French poet 4 likes |
 | Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. — Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, Scottish writer 4 likes |
 | I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. — Jorge Luis Borges, 1899-1986, Argentine writer 4 likes |
 | No furniture so charming as books. — Sydney Smith, 1771-1845, British writer & cleric 4 likes |
 | Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. — Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, German-Jewish physicist 4 likes |
 | The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. — Saint Augustine, 354-430, Christian theologian & philosopher 4 likes |
 | The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries. — René Descartes, 1596-1650, French philosopher 4 likes |
| A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742-1799, German author of maxims 3 likes |
 | The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. — Mark Twain, 1835-1910, American writer 3 likes |
| Definition of a classic — something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. — Mark Twain, 1835-1910, American writer 3 likes |
 | If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it. — Ambrose Bierce, 1842–1914, American writer 3 likes |
 | I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple. — Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, French philosopher 3 likes |
| I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train. — Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer 3 likes |
| You can never be wise unless you love reading. — Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784, English writer 3 likes |
 | All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. — Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961, American writer, Nobel 1954 3 likes |
 | Successful people have libraries. The rest have big screen TVs. — Jim Rohn, 1930-2009, American self-help speker 3 likes |
 | I hate books, for they only teach people to talk about what they don't understand. — Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778, Swiss-French philosopher 3 likes |
 | Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance. — Lyndon Johnson, 1908-1973, American President [1963-1969] 3 likes |
 | Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. — Harry Truman, 1884-1972, American President [1945-1953] 3 likes |
| There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742-1799, German author of maxims 3 likes |
 | The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones. — John Wooden, 1910-2010, American basketball coach 3 likes |
 | There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book. — Marcel Proust, 1871-1922, French writer 3 likes |
 | To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. — Herman Melville, 1819-1891, American writer 3 likes |
 | Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wants to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time. — E. M. Forster, 1879-1970, British writer 3 likes |
 | The books are the opium of the West. — Anatole France, 1844-1924, French writer, Nobel 1921 3 likes |
| I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. — Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, Scottish writer 3 likes |
 | Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs. — Zig Ziglar, 1926-2012, American self-help writer 3 likes |
 | The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book. — Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977, Russian-American writer 3 likes |
 | She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain. — Louisa May Alcott, 1923-1888, American writer 3 likes |
| The good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense. — Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977, Russian-American writer 3 likes |
 | Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly. — Francis Bacon, 1561-1626, English philosopher 2 likes |
 | There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island. — Walt Disney, 1901-1966, American businessman & cartoonist 2 likes |
 | Read much, but not many books. — Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790, American politician & writer 2 likes |
| All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books. — Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, French philosopher 2 likes |
 | If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1884, American philosopher 2 likes |
| A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it. — Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784, English writer 2 likes |
 | Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. — Edmund Burke, 1729-1797, British statesman & philosopher 2 likes |
 | A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. — G. K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, English writer & critic 2 likes |
| There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read. — G. K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, English writer & critic 2 likes |
| Miss a meal if you have to, but don't miss a book. — Jim Rohn, 1930-2009, American self-help speker 2 likes |
 | Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. — Arthur Clarke, 1917-2008, British Sci-Fi writer 2 likes |
| Five years from now, you’re the same person except for the people you’ve met and the books you’ve read. — John Wooden, 1910-2010, American basketball coach 2 likes |
 | The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones. — Joseph Joubert, 1754-1824, French author of maxims 2 likes |
 | My first homelands were books. — Marguerite Yourcenar, 1903-1987, French writer 2 likes |
 | For every book you buy, you should buy the time to read it. — Karl Lagerfeld, 1933-2019, German fashion designer 2 likes |
 | With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions. — Charles Caleb Colton, 1780-1832, English cleric & writer 2 likes |
 | To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent. — Nelson Algren, 1909-1981, American writer 2 likes |
 | I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced. — Lawrence Durrell, 1912-1990, British writer 2 likes |
| Dostoevski’s “The Double” is his best work though an obvious and shameless imitation of Gogol's “Nose.” — Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977, Russian-American writer 2 likes |
 | I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve. — Montesquieu, 1689-1755, French thinker 2 likes |
 | My early and invincible love of reading... I would not exchange for the treasures of India. — Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794, English historian 2 likes |
| Books are a hard-bound drug with no danger of an overdose. I am the happy victim of books. — Karl Lagerfeld, 1933-2019, German fashion designer 2 likes |
| Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. — Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977, Russian-American writer 2 likes |
 | There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts. — Charles Dickens, 1812-1870, British writer 2 likes |
| Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name. — Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977, Russian-American writer 2 likes |
 | You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. — Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012, American sci-fi writer 1 likes |
 | The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods. — Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930, British writer 1 likes |
 | The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author’s ideas and those of the readers. — Nicolas Chamfort, 1740-1794, French writer 1 likes |
 | My library is an archive of longings. — Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist 1 likes |
 | The Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book. |
| 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. |
| My books are friends that never fail me. |
 | Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing. |
 | When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes. |
| Your library is your paradise. |
 | Beware the man of the single book. — Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970, British philosopher (the Bible) |
| There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it. |
 | In unremarkable texts we soon trip on phrases that penetrate into us, as if a sword has thrust up to its hilt inside us. |
| Reading is an unbeatable drug, because more than just the mediocrity of our lives, it allows us to escape the mediocrity of our souls. |
 | I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. |
| Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self. |
| A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. |
 | Don't judge a book by its cover. |
 | The pyramids of Egypt are the oldest libraries of mankind. |
 | People who read only the classics are sure to remain up-to-date. — Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1830-1916, German author of maxims |
 | Woe to any novel that the reader is in no hurry to complete. — Jean d’ Alembert, 1717-1783, French physicist & philosopher |
 | 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. |
| 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”. |
 | Read much, but not many books. |
 | Reading brings us unknown friends. |
 | A really great writer is one who surprises us by writing something we have always known. |
 | Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading. |
 | Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon. |
 | He who can reach a child's heart can reach the worlds heart. |
 | The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers. |
 | An art book is a museum without walls. |
 | Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own. |
| Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me. |
| The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads. |
 | Books must be treated with respect, we feel that in our bones, because words have power. Bring enough words together they can bend space and time. |
| This book was written using 100% recycled words. |
 | 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. |
 | Tell me how you read and I'll tell you who you are. |
 | Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person. |
 | The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history. — Noam Chomsky, 1928-, American linguist, philosopher, social activist |
 | A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us. |
| Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered. |
 | In antiquity and the Middle Ages reading was necessarily reading aloud. — Marshall McLuhan, 1911-1980, Canadian academic & media theorist |
 | Publishing a book is talking at the table in front of the servants. |
 | It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them. |
| Home is where your books are. |
 | Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. |
| Reading … is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
| If I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father's library. |
| My books standing there on the shelf do not know that I have written them. |
| I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books. |
 | A publisher who writes is like a cow in a milk bar. |
| To want to meet an author because you like his books is as ridiculous as wanting to meet the goose because you like pate de foie gras. |
 | A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. |
| He was a one-book man. Some men have only one book in them; others, a library. |
 | When you publish a book, it’s the world’s book. The world edits it. |
 | A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking. |
 | More books have resulted from somebody's need to write than from anybody’s need to read. — Ashleigh Brilliant, 1933-, British cartoonist & epigrammatist |
 | So many books, so little time. |
 | We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read. |
 | If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. — Stephen King, 1947-, American author of horror & fantasy fiction |
 | Books end. Stories never end. — Marty Rubin, 1930-1994, Canadian gay activist, author & journalist |
 | I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey. — H.L. Mencken, 1880-1956, American columnist & cultural critic |
 | People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned. — Saul Bellow, 1914-2005, Canadian-American writer, Nobel 1976 |
 | There is always in a book—even a badly written one—a phrase that smacks the reader in the face, as if it were waiting for him alone. |
| There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book. |
| Books are funny little portable pieces of thought. — Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist |
| Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer. — Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist |
 | A good book is an event in my life. |
 | In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius. |
 | Everything has already begun before, the first line of the first page of every novel refers to something that has already happened outside the book. |
| Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else. |
 | Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library. |
| A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. |
| Your first book already defines you, while you are really far from being defined. And this definition is something you may then carry with you for the rest of your life, trying to confirm it or extend or correct or deny it; but you can never eliminate it. |
| A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading. |
Personal Stories
 | So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world. — Vincent Van Gogh, 1853-1890, Dutch painter 4 likes |
 | So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war! — Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, American President (on meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) 3 likes |
Latin Quotes
 | I fear the man of a single book. Hominem unius libri timeo. — Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1225-1274, Italian Dominican friar & philosopher 14 likes |
Quotes in Verse
 | There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away… |
| But a Book is only the Heart’s Portrait- every Page a Pulse. |
Funny Quotes
 | Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring… “How to Build a Boat.” — Steven Wright, 1955-, American comedian 7 likes |
 | I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn't think I could read, much less write. — George W. Bush, 1946-, American President 4 likes |
| What's most interesting about some books is the question: How did this crap ever get published? — Ashleigh Brilliant, 1933-, British cartoonist & epigrammatist 4 likes |
 | From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it. — Groucho Marx, 1890-1977, American comedian 4 likes |
| No trilogy should have more than four books. — Arthur Clarke, 1917-2008, British Sci-Fi writer 3 likes |
 | I bought a book, “How to make it big.” I got ripped off. It was about money. — Rodney Dangerfield, 1924-2004, American comedian 3 likes |
 | I took a course in speed reading, learning to read straight down the middle of the page, and I was able to go through War and Peace in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia. — Woody Allen, 1935-, American actor & film director 2 likes |
 | I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars. — Fred Allen, 1894-1956, American comedian 2 likes |
| I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose. — Steven Wright, 1955-, American comedian 2 likes |
| What is this obsession people have with books? They put them in their houses — like they’re trophies. What do you need it for after you read it? |
 | Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. |
Stupid Quotes
| One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures. — George W. Bush, 1946-, American President 3 likes |
Proverbs
 | If you believe everything you read, better not read. 4 likes |
 | Never judge a book by its cover. 4 likes |
Special Quotes
 | To read them all, reckon 150,000 years. — Slogan of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (2014) 3 likes |
| Let your fingers do the walking. — Slogan of Yellow Pages 2 likes |
Movie Quotes
 | That's what makes me sad: life is so different from books. I wish it were the same: clear, logical, organized. — from the film Pierrot le Fou (1965) 4 likes |
