“No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.”

“The real Bible is a sealed book, an apocryphon, a book not to be opened (mentally) until its time has come.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

“Book lovers will understand me,
and they will know too that part of the pleasure
of a library lies in its very existence.”

Jan Morris (1926) British historian

“I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be — that man may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

“Opposed to atomism and behaviorism, the systems view of man links him again with the world he lives in, for he is seen as emerging in that world and reflecting its general character.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

“Every stage of life has its troubles, and no man is content with his own age.”
Omne aevum curae; cunctis sua displicet aetas.

Ausonius (310–395) poet

“The concept of positivity in itself, in abstracto, has become part and parcel of the ideology today. … Critique has started to become suspect, regardless of its content.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

“Superstition lives longer than books, it is engraved on the human mind 'til it becomes a part of its existence.”

John Clare (1793–1864) English poet

“A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he's finished.”

Zsa Zsa Gabor (1917–2016) Hungarian-American socialite and actress

“Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist