“Books have souls. Or so romantics like me tend to think.”

— Douglas Rushkoff

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Books have souls. Or so romantics like me tend to think." by Douglas Rushkoff?

Douglas Rushkoff 2

writer, American media theorist 1961

Related quotes

“Firms that have a high BE/ME (a low stock price relative to book value) tend to have low earnings on assets. Conversely, low BE/ME (a high stock price relative to book value) is associated with persistently high earnings.”

Eugene Fama (1939) American economist and Nobel laureate in Economics

Source: Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds, 1993, p. 8

“Being poor is only romantic in books.”

Sidney Sheldon book Rage of Angels

Source: Rage of Angels

“Without story books is like a person with no soul.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“Romantics might like to think of themselves as being composed of stardust. Cynics might prefer to think of themselves as nuclear waste.”

Simon Singh book Big Bang

Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe, Fourth Estate, ISBN 0-00-716220-0

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Attributed to Cicero in J. M. Braude's Speaker's Desk Book of Quips, Quotes, & Anecdotes (Jaico Pub. House, 1966), p. 52.
Dennis McHenry in a 2011 post at theCAMPVS.com http://thecampvs.com/2011/08/03/cicero-on-books-and-the-soul/ identified a source for the exact form of words in the essay "On the Pleasure of Reading" http://books.google.com/books?id=0YfQAAAAMAAJ&dq=cicero%20%22room%20without%20books%22%20%2B%22contemporary%20review%22&pg=PA240#v=onepage&q&f=false by Sir John Lubbock, published in The Contemporary Review, vol. 49 (1886) https://archive.org/details/contemporaryrev55unkngoog, pp. 240–51 https://archive.org/stream/contemporaryrev55unkngoog#page/n250/mode/2up, in which Lubbock wrote that "Cicero described a room without books as a body without a soul" (p. 241). The same sentence may also be found on p. 61 https://archive.org/stream/thepleasuresofli01lubbuoft#page/60/mode/2up of Lubbock's collection The Pleasures of Life. Part I. 18th edition (London and New York : Macmillan and Co. 1890) https://archive.org/details/thepleasuresofli01lubbuoft, in a lecture titled "A Song of Books". McHenry suggested that Lubbock may have had in mind the words "postea vero quam Tyrannio mihi libros disposuit mens addita videtur meis aedibus" at Cicero, Ad Atticum 4.8, which are translated by E. O. Winstedt on p. 293 https://archive.org/stream/letterstoatticus01ciceuoft#page/292/mode/2up of Cicero: Letters to Atticus I (London : William Heinemann, and New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons 1912) https://archive.org/details/letterstoatticus01ciceuoft "Since Tyrannio has arranged my books, the house seems to have acquired a soul", and by Evelyn Shuckburgh on p. 234 https://archive.org/stream/cu31924012541433#page/n283/mode/2up of The Letters of Cicero. Vol. I. B. C. 68–52 (London : George Bell and Sons 1908) https://archive.org/details/cu31924012541433 "Moreover, since Tyrannio has arranged my books for me, my house seems to have had a soul added to it" (although the Latin word " mens http://athirdway.com/glossa/?s=mens", rendered "soul" by both Winstedt and Shuckburgh, is more usually translated by the English "mind"). D. R. Shackleton Bailey in Cicero's Letters to Atticus (Harmondsworth : Penguin Books 1978), p. 162, translated "And now that Tyrannio has put my books straight, my house seems to have woken to life".
Disputed
Variant: Ut conclave sine libris ita corpus sine anima" A room without books is like a body without a soul

“There are books that I own that somehow even without reading them they mean something to me. So I think people have a relationship with books in a library whether you’ve come specifically to read them or not.”

Rem Koolhaas (1944) Dutch architect (b.1944)

“Soul is when you take a song and make it a part of you — a part that's so true, so real, people think it must have happened to you. … It's like electricity — we don't really know what it is, do we? But it's a force that can light a room. Soul is like electricity, like a spirit, a drive, a power.”

Ray Charles (1930–2004) American musician

As quoted in LIFE magazine (July 1966), also in Ray Charles : Man and Music (1998) by Michael Lydon, p. 264
As quoted in Pearls of Wisdom (198 http://interview.sweetsearch.com/2010/11/ray-charles.html
Variant: What is soul? It's like electricity — we don't really know what it is, but it's a force that can light a room.