“Books … hold within them the gathered wisdom of humanity, the collected knowledge of the world's thinkers, the amusement and excitement built up by the imaginations of brilliant people. Books contain humor, beauty, wit, emotion, thought, and, indeed, all of life. Life without books is empty.”
Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), pp. 74-75
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Isaac Asimov303
American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni… 1920–1992Related quotes
John Selden (1584–1654) English jurist and scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution, and of Jewish law
as reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 29.
Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic
Part of his public message upon arrival on his second visit to America (19 May 1932).
General sources
Jean Ingelow (1820–1897) British writer
The Preface to the American edition of Fated to be Free (1875)
“.. holding a book but reading the empty spaces.”
Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes
Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes
Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer
Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 11
Context: How much of what we do is free will, and how much is programmed in our genes? Why is each people so narrow that it believes that it, and it alone, has all the answers?
In religion, is there but one road to salvation? Or are there many, all equally good, all going in the same general direction?
I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn.
Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician
Speech, Saskatchewan Legislature, February 17, 1954.
Walter Raleigh (professor) (1861–1922) British academic
p. 26 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b325850;view=1up;seq=32 <br class="br">Six Essays on Johnson (1910)