This is an archive of quotes that have appeared in the Quotes section of Portal:Literature. More quotes in wikiquote:Books.
Example of a quote in wikicode:
{{cquote|Read in order to live.}}
::[[Gustave Flaubert]]
Today is May 4, 2024, week number 18.
| “ | Most new books are forgotten within a year, especially by those who borrow them. | ” |
| “ | I read part of it all the way through. | ” |
| “ | Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account. | ” |
| “ | A room without books is like a body without a soul. | ” |
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (originally in Latin) & also attributed to G. K. Chesterton
| “ | Anti-war books are as likely to stop war as anti-glacier books are to stop glaciers. | ” |
| “ | Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom. |
” |
- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), The Tempest, Act 1 scene 2
| “ | Disparage no book, for it is also a part of the world. | ” |
| “ | You will get little or nothing from the printed page if you bring it nothing but your eye. | ” |
- Walter Pitkin, Art of Rapid Reading, 1930
| “ | Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it. | ” |
| “ | Learn as much by writing as by reading. | ” |
| “ | There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away, |
” |
| “ | Books do furnish a room. | ” |
| “ | A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return. | ” |
| “ | An ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand books..and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy. | ” |
| “ | Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. | ” |
| “ | All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hour, and the books of all time. | ” |
- John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies (1865) lecture 1 "Of Kings' Treasuries" 8
| “ | No furniture so charming as books. | ” |
- Sydney Smith, In Lady Holland ‘Memoir’ (1855) vol. 1, ch. 9, p. 240.
| “ | Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books. | ” |
- Francis Bacon, Proposition touching Amendment of Laws
| “ | Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t. I’m not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own. | ” |
- Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot (1984) ch. 13
| “ | Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed. | ” |
- Anne Rice, The Witching Hour, Knopf, 1990, p. 261
| “ | Books are for use. | ” |
- Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan, Five laws of library science, 1928
| “ | I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. | ” |
| “ | Read in order to live. | ” |
| “ | The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. | ” |
| “ | As a kid, I sensed history going on all around me, but the basic thrust of it didn't move me. | ” |
| “ | There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. | ” |
| “ | I have this kind of mind that's always cursed with having to know everything that you possibly can about something. | ” |
| “ | To be a poet is a condition, not a profession. | ” |
| “ | Twentieth-century Russian literature has produced nothing special except perhaps one novel and two stories by Andrei Platonov, who ended his days sweeping streets. | ” |
| “ | In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others. | ” |
| “ | My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence. | ” |
| “ | My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence. | ” |
| “ | Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child. | ” |
- Anonymous
| “ | Where one begins by burning books, one will end up burning people. | ” |
| “ | At the Day of Judgement we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done. | ” |
| “ | There isn't a such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. | ” |
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891, preface
| “ | People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. | ” |
- Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts, 1931
| “ | Books are uniquely portable magic. | ” |
| “ | Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. | ” |
- Umberto Eco, Il nome della rosa, 1980
| “ | Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. | ” |
| “ | Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book. | ” |
- Bill Watterson, 1995
| “ | The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books. |
” |
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus, 1875
| “ | The multitude of books is making us ignorant. | ” |
| “ | ...the book remains the carrier of civilization, the voice of the individual. | ” |
| “ | Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. | ” |
- Francis Bacon, Of Studies
| “ | The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait. | ” |
| “ | When a book and a head collide and there is a hollow sound, is that always in the book? | ” |
Original: "Wenn ein Buch und ein Kopf zusammenstoßen und es klingt hohl, ist das allemal im Buche?"
| “ | Oh for a book and a shady nook... | ” |
- John Wilson, Scottish writer, (1785 - 1854)
| “ | Literature is news that stays news. | ” |
- Ezra Pound (1885-1972), U.S. poet, ABC of Reading (1934) chapter 8
| “ | Books...are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development. | ” |
- Dorothy L. Sayers (1893 - 1957), The unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928)
| “ | Wear the old coat and buy the new book. | ” |
- Austin Phelps (1820 - 1890)
| “ | This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book — it makes a very poor doorstop. | ” |
- Alfred Hitchcock (1899 - 1980)