“It was a rude, brutal and purposely ugly book. However, it was an honest book.”
Lima Barreto (1881–1922) Brazilian writer
Recordações do Escrivão Isaias Caminha (1909)
Introductory words by P. M. Bergman.
The Anarchist Cookbook (1971)
“It was a rude, brutal and purposely ugly book. However, it was an honest book.”
Lima Barreto (1881–1922) Brazilian writer
Recordações do Escrivão Isaias Caminha (1909)
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet
The Furniture of a Woman's Mind (1727)
Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray
Variant: There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
Some Mistakes of Moses (1879) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38802/38802-h/38802-h.htm Preface <br class="br">Context: Too great praise challenges attention, and often brings to light a thousand faults that otherwise the general eye would never see. Were we allowed to read the Bible as we do all other books, we would admire its beauties, treasure its worthy thoughts, and account for all its absurd, grotesque and cruel things, by saying that its authors lived in rude, barbaric times. But we are told that it was written by inspired men; that it contains the will of God; that it is perfect, pure, and true in all its parts; the source and standard of all moral and religious truth; that it is the star and anchor of all human hope; the only guide for man, the only torch in Nature's night. These claims are so at variance with every known recorded fact, so palpably absurd, that every free unbiased soul is forced to raise the standard of revolt.
“If a book is well written, I always find it too short.”
Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility
Variant: [I]f a book is well written, I always find it too short.
Source: Sense and Sensibility
Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer
Trash, Violence, and Versace: But Is It Art? http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_1_urbanities-trash.html (Winter 1998). <br class="br">City Journal (1998 - 2008)
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet
Gore Vidal book Julian
Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 1, Libanius to Priscus, Antioch March 380
Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms