Quotes about books
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“All I have learned, I learned from books.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Learning

“Thinking. This book contains some. Whether you try it at home is up to you.”

Terry Pratchett book Nation

Source: Nation

Home, Thinking

“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threating to destroy the Social and the Political fabric of America. The confidence that we have always had as a people, is not simply some romantic dream, or a proverb in a dusty book, that we read, just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea of which founded our nation and has guided us in our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else. We've always believed in a thing called, progress. We've always had a faith, that the days of our children, would be better than our own. Our people are losing that faith. Fopr the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe, that the next five years, will be worse than the past five years. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor, unitl the shock of Watergate. We've got to stop crying and start sweating. Stop talking and start walking. Working together, with our common faith, we cannot fail.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Children, People, Faith, Dreams

“When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Life, Way, Reading, Parting

“There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

Motivation, Reading, Funny

“Books have led some to learning and others to madness, when they swallow more than they can digest.”

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) Italian scholar and poet

As quoted in "Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia" (1962) by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 75

Learning, Madness

“I own a book,' he thought, delighted (Paolini 291).”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

“What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support,
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men. 1
Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 22.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

i.17-26
Paradise Lost (1667)
Context: And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert th' Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.

Men, God, Way, Support

“Those who don't read good books have no advantage over those who can't.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.

Reading

“My books piled up before me for my use waiting in space where I placed them, they haven't disappeared, time's left its remnants and qualities for me to use -- my words piled up, my texts, my manuscripts, my loves.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

Love, Time, Waiting

“I don't want no better book than what your face is.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Love's stories written in love's richest books.
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.”

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream

Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Love, Sleep

“There is nothing in our book, the Qur'an, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That's a good religion.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

November 10, 1963
This was said before Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam and as he himself stated, before he truly understood Islam.
Malcolm X Speaks (1965)

Peace, Religion, Law, Intelligence

“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 novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Girl, Boy

“No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Drawing

“As we expand our knowledge of good books, we shrink the circle of men whose company we appreciate.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

Men, Knowledge

“One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.”

Michael Cunningham (1952) American novelist and screenwriter

“You and I will always be friends."

"Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Forgiveness

“Lord Illingworth: The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden.
Mrs. Allonby: It ends with Revelations.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Act I
A Woman of No Importance (1893)

Life

“Reading is my favourite occupation, when I have leisure for it and books to read.”

Anne Brontë book Agnes Grey

Source: Agnes Grey

Reading

“A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Wine

“A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

Life, Beauty, Way, Lovers

“I want to talk to her. I want to have lunch with her. I want her to give me a book she just read and loved. She is my phantom limb, and I just can’t believe I’m here without her.”- on losing her best friend”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Source: I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

Love, Reading

“I'm writing this book because we're all going to die”

Jack Kerouac book Visions of Cody

In the loneliness of my life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother far away, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our death, sleeping in me raw bed, alone and stupid...
Visions of Cody (1960)

“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.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. LIX
Following the Equator (1897)

“Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.”

Lisa See book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Source: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Reading

“I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial

Justice, Law, Parting

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Life, Perfection, Dead

“He helped the Librarian up. There was a red glow in the ape's eyes. It had tried to steal his books. This was probably the best proof any wizard could require that the trolleys were brainless.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Help

“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

World, History, Reading

“Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Secret

“A thousand times good night. A thousand times the worse, to want thy light. Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books, but love from love, toward school with heavy looks.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Love, School, Light, Time

“The librarians were mysterious. It was said they could tell what book you needed just by looking at you, and they could take your voice away with a word.”

Terry Pratchett book Wintersmith

Source: Wintersmith

“When you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.”

Christopher Morley book Parnassus on Wheels

Variant: When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book I mean.
Source: Parnassus on Wheels

Love, Life, Friendship, Sea

“To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.”

Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American novelist, short story writer

“Pay attention to what's happening around you. Read the book before you see the movie. Remember, though you, alone, are responsible for your own happiness, its still okay to feel responsible for someone else's. Liveto learn.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

Source: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future...: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned

Feeling, Learning, Reading, Happiness

“Happiness is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

Light, Happiness

“I like books whose virtue is all drawn together in a page or two. I like sentences that don't budge though armies cross them.”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Source: Jacob's Room

“Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way.”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

"Pirx's Tale" in More Tales of Pirx The Pilot (1983)
Context: Oh, I read good books, too, but only Earthside. Why that is, I don't really know. Never stopped to analyze it. Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way. When they talk about outer space, they make you feel the silence, so unlike the Earthly kind — and the lifelessness. Whatever the adventures, the message is always the same: humans will never feel at home out there.

Truth, Way