Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle
Source: I Capture the Castle
Source: The Good Earth
Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle
Source: I Capture the Castle
“It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.”
Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist
As quoted in C.S. Lewis (1963), by Roger Lancelyn Green, p. 9
Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator
Source: F.N. D'Alession. " Philosopher, reformer Mortimer Adler, father of 'Great Books' program, dies at 98 http://lubbockonline.com/stories/062901/upd_075-4286.shtml#.VVHE0_ntmko." at lubbockonline.com, June 29, 2001.
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
As quoted in "Literary Censorship in England" in Current Opinion, Vol. 55, No. 5 (November 1913), p. 378; this has sometimes appeared on the internet in paraphrased form as "Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads"
1910s
Context: Any public committee man who tries to pack the moral cards in the interest of his own notions is guilty of corruption and impertinence. The business of a public library is not to supply the public with the books the committee thinks good for the public, but to supply the public with the books the public wants. … Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read. But as the ratepayer is mostly a coward and a fool in these difficult matters, and the committee is quite sure that it can succeed where the Roman Catholic Church has made its index expurgatorius the laughing-stock of the world, censorship will rage until it reduces itself to absurdity; and even then the best books will be in danger still.
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
Speech on Religious Intolerance as presented at the Pittsburgh Opera House (14 October 1879).
Context: They say the religion of your fathers is good enough. Why should a father object to your inventing a better plow than he had? They say to me, do you know more than all the theologians dead? Being a perfectly modest man I say I think I do. Now we have come to the conclusion that every man has a right to think. Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man.
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)
Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary
8 November 1943
Variant: If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)