Quotes about shelf (100 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that a copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf-life in some corner on an out-of-the-way library somehwere in Reykjavik, Valladolid or Vancouver.”

Amos Oz book A Tale of Love and Darkness

Source: A Tale of Love and Darkness

Life , People , Books , Way

“Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

Books

“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Life , Stupidity , Universe

“If you have ever peeled an onion, then you know that the first thin, papery layer reveals another thin, papery layer, and that layer reveals another, and another, and before you know it you have hundreds of layers all over the kitchen table and thousands of tears in your eyes, sorry that you ever started peeling in the first place and wishing that you had left the onion alone to wither away on the shelf of the pantry while you went on with your life, even if that meant never again enjoying the complicated and overwhelming taste of this strange and bitter vegetable.

In this way, the story of the Baudelaire orphans is like an onion, and if you insist on reading each and every thin, papery layer in A Series of Unfortunate Events, your only reward will be 170 chapters of misery in your library and countless tears in your eyes. Even if you have read the first twelve volumes of the Baudelaires' story, it is not too late to stop peeling away the layers, and to put this book back on the shelf to wither away while you read something less complicated and overwhelming. The end of this unhappy chronicle is like its bad beginning, as each misfortune only reveals another, and another, and another, and only those with the stomach for this strange and bitter tale should venture any farther into the Baudelaire onion. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.”

Daniel Handler book The End

Source: The End (2006), Chapter 1

Life , Books , Way , Tear

“A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.
A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by three men simultaneously.
The man and woman get dressed up on Sunday — and go to Church or maybe their "revolutionary" political meeting.
Have you ever looked at the Stag, Man, Hero, Tough magazines on the shelf of your local bookstore? Do you know why the newspapers with the articles like "Girl 12 raped by 14 men" sell so well? To what in us are they appealing?
Women, for their own preservation, are trying to pull themselves together. And it is necessary for all of us that they do so.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

"Man – and Woman" in Vermont Freeman (Mid-February 1972) http://www.motherjones.com/files/Man_and_Woman_0.jpg; partially quoted, out of context in "Bernie Sanders: Woman 'fantasizes being raped'" http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/bernie-sanders-woman-fantasizes-being-raped/article/2565191 by Ariel Cohen, Washington Examiner (28 May 2015)
1970s

Women , Men , Home , Girl

“The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

" My Father's Suitcase", Nobel Prize for Literature lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2006/pamuk-lecture_en.html (December 7, 2006).

Love , Life , People , Books

“There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire – poison and antidote.”

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

In Kenneth Harris Talking To: Bertrand Russell (1971)
Attributed from posthumous publications

“Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Books , Soul

“His library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.”

Ray Bradbury Farewell Summer

Source: Farewell Summer

Books

“Hair is gray and the firers are burning. So many dreams on the shelf. You say I wanted you to be proud of me. I always wanted that myself.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

Dreams

“It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.”

Annie Dillard book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Source: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Books , Night , Happiness

“If you want to know who the oppressed minorities in America are, simply look at who gets their own shelf in the bookstore. A black shelf, a women's shelf, and a gay shelf.”

Armistead Maupin (1944) American writer

Women

“She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

“if I wait to be
perfect
before I love myself
I will always be
unsatisfied
and ungrateful

if I wait until
all the flaws, chips,
and cracks disappear
I will be the cup
that stands on the shelf
and is never used”

Joyce Rupp (1943) American writer

Love , Waiting , Perfection

“It was a lesson most people learned much earlier; that even friendship could have an undisclosed shelf life. That loyalty and affection, so consuming and powerful, could dissipate like fog.”

Jennifer Haigh (1968) Novelist

Source: The Condition

Life , Friendship , People , Learning

“She loved the smell of books, the feel of books, the look of them on the shelf.”

Elizabeth Peters (1927–2013) American author and egyptologist

Source: Houses of Stone

Love , Books , Feeling

“I cannot live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Life

“You can't hoard fun. It has no shelf life.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

Life

“There is a universe behind and before him. And the day is approaching when closing the last book on the last shelf on the far left; he will say to himself, "now what?”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Source: Nausea, The Wall and Other Stories

Books , Universe

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Source: The Books in My Life

Books , Lying

“I'm not interested in creating a book that is read once and then placed on the shelf and forgotten. I am very happy when people have worn out my books, or that they're held together by Scotch tape.”

Richard Scarry (1919–1994) author and illustrator from the United States

People , Books , Reading , Happiness

“People are best on records and books because you can turn them off or put them back on the shelf.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

People , Books

“In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

“I simply believe that a book has a journey to make, and should not be condemned to being stuck on a shelf… Let’s leave our books free to travel, then, to be touched by other hands, and enjoyed by other eyes.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Books , Travel

“I like to think that when I fall,
A rain-drop in Death's shoreless sea,
This shelf of books along the wall,
Beside my bed, will mourn for me.”

Robert W. Service Ballads of a Bohemian

Source: Ballads of a Bohemian

Death , Books , Thinking , Sea

“Now take my hand and hold it tight.
I will not fail you here tonight,
For failing you, I fail myself
And place my soul upon a shelf
In Hell's library without light.
I will not fail you here tonight.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Source: The Book Of Counted Sorrows

Soul , Hell , Light

“Will Solace sighed. He was, of course, tied to Nico. He propped his elbow on Nico’s shoulder as if the son of Hades were a convenient shelf.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

“Sometimes I think the human heart is just a simple shelf. There is only so much you can pile onto it before something falls off an edge and you are left to pick up the pieces.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Source: House Rules

Thinking , Heart

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Money , Books , Lying

“You see? I know where every single book used to be in the library.' She pointed to the shelf opposite. 'Over there was, which was a hugely popular fishing book and one of a series, I believe.”

Jasper Fforde (1961) British novelist

Source: Shades of Grey

Books , Fish

“The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

Books , Soul , Reading

“When you were the son of evil, there was little you couldn't do, own, or kill, and yet her mortal self was an elusive trophy he could touch, but not put on his shelf.

This made her rare. This made her precious.

This made him… love her.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Mine

Love , Evil

“Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself,
Counting this row and that row of moccasins
Waiting on the silent shelf.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Beauty , Waiting

“Potential has a shelf life.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Source: CAT'S EYE.

Life

“Why do predictions of the Death of the West not belong on the same shelf as the predictions of 'nuclear winter' and 'global warming'? Answer: the Death of the West is not a prediction of what is going to happen, it is a depiction of what is happening now.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, The Death of the West (2002)

Death , Winter

“Broadly, the Long Tail is about abundance. Abundant shelf space, abundant distribution, abundant choice.”

Chris Anderson book The Long Tail

Source: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006), Ch. 8, p. 143

“Why do I always want to sock it to you hard?
Let you know what love is like when I’m
keeping all my cards up on the shelf
Where you can’t see them
Why do I always want to keep it to myself?”

Zooey Deschanel (1980) American actress, musician, and singer-songwriter

"Over It Over Again".
Volume Two (2010)

Love

“So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,
Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

"Just Keep Quiet and Nobody Will Notice"
I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938)

Thinking

“When I was a boy, the bestselling books were often the books that were on your piano teacher's shelf. I mean, Steinbeck, Hemingway, some Faulkner. Faulkner actually had, considering how hard he is to read and how drastic the experiments are, quite a middle-class readership. But certainly someone like Steinbeck was a bestseller as well as a Nobel Prize-winning author of high intent. You don't feel that now. I don't feel that we have the merger of serious and pop — it's gone, dissolving. Tastes have coarsened. People read less, they're less comfortable with the written word.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Salon interview (2000)

People , Books , Feeling , Boy

“Why don't you sit right down and stay awhile?
We like the same things and I like your style
Its not a secret; why do you keep it?
I'm just sitting on the shelf”

Zooey Deschanel (1980) American actress, musician, and singer-songwriter

Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?
She & Him : Volume One (2008)

Secret

“Having mandated me to proclaim on your behalf, and in your name, that Eastern Nigeria be a sovereign independent Republic, now, therefore I, Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Military Governor of Eastern Nigeria, by virtue of the authority, and pursuant to the principles recited above, do hereby solemnly proclaim that the territory and region known as and called Eastern Nigeria together with her continental shelf and territorial waters, shall, henceforth, be an independent sovereign state of the name and title of The Republic of Biafra.”

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (1933–2011) Nigerian politician and military leader

30 May, 1967, as quoted by Bernard Odogwu (1985) No Place To Hide – Crises And Conflicts Inside Biafra.

Water

“Eight simple steps of what I think caused the Flood and explain all these strange phenomena on the planet. Then we'll go into a little bit more detail and then we'll close this down.
1. Noah and the animals got safely in the ark.
2. A 300 degree below zero ice meteor came flying toward the earth and broke up in space. As it was breaking up, some of the fragments got caught and became the rings around the planets. They made the craters on the Moon, the craters on some of the planets, and what was left over came down and splattered on top of the North and South pole.
3. This super cold snow fell on the poles mostly, burying the mammoths, standing up.
4. The dump of ice on the North and South pole cracked the crust of the earth releasing the fountains of the deep. The spreading ice caused the Ice Age effects. The glacier effects that we see. It buried the mammoths. It made the earth wobble around for a few thousand years. And it made the canopy collapse, which used to protect the earth. And it broke open the fountains of the deep.
5. During the first few months of the flood, the dead animals would settle out, and dead plants, and all get buried. They would become coal, if they were plants, and oil if they're animals. And those are still found today in huge graveyards. Fossils found in graveyards. Oil found in big pockets under the ground.
6. During the last few months of the flood, the unstable plates of the earth would shift around. Some places lifted up; other places sank down. That's going to form ocean basins and mountain ranges. And the runoff would cause incredible erosion like the Grand Canyon in a couple of weeks.
7. Over the next few hundred years, the ice caps would slowly melt back retreating to their current size. The added water from the ice melt would raise the ocean level creating what's called a continental shelf. It would also absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere which allows for radiation to get in which is going to shorten people's life spans. And in the days of Peleg, it finally took affect.
8. The earth still today shows the effects of this devastating flood.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Life , People , Age , Mountain

“My arrangement of my shelves may earn me a reputation for untidiness among the unthinking, but I am indifferent to these. From natural laziness – if you like – from sheer inability to discover any congruity between one book and another – I will not classify. There they are – as they come – as they go – in serried shelves – all happy with the fortuity of things – there are my books from the lowest shelf – to reach which the seeker must go (as he ought) on bended knees – to "the dust and silence of the upper shelf," as Lord Macaulay put it – there they are – awaiting the touch of the discerning hand and the light of the critical eye.
The Bankrupt Bookseller by Will Y. Darling, Robert Grant & Son Ltd, Edinburgh, 1947, p. 28.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947)

Books , Nature , Light , Silence

“I read Wuthering Heights when I was seven. I stole a copy from the library. We weren’t allowed books in the house because they’re ‘dirty and dusty’. My mum had a shelf of fake leather books which my dad used to hide whisky behind. I used to die of embarrassment every time a visitor tried to pick up a book and realized it was fake.
The library was forbidden so it became exotic and sexy in my imagination. I was dying to get in there and read a book!”

Carole Morin British writer

Trivial and Profound (2013)

Books , Imagination , Time , Reading

“In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distributions, narrowly targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.”

Chris Anderson book The Long Tail

Source: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006), Ch. 4, p. 52

“People say to me, "Bill, quit bringing up Kennedy, man. Let it go. It was a long time ago. Just forget about it." All right, then don't bring up Jesus to me. I mean, as long as we're talking shelf-life here. "You know, Bill, Jesus died for you …" Yeah, it was a long time ago. Forget about it. How about this: get Pilate to release the fuckin' files. "Quit washing your hands, Pilate, and release the files. Who else was on that grassy Golgotha that day? Oh yeah, the three Roman peasants in $100 sandals. Yeah, right!"”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Arizona Bay (1997)

Life , People , Time , Forgetting

“But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information. I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

People , Books , World , Education

“The tusks which clashed in mighty brawls
Of mastodons, are billiard balls.
The sword of Charlemagne the Just
Is Ferric Oxide, known as rust.
The grizzly bear, whose potent hug,
Was feared by all, is now a rug.
Great Caesar's bust is on the shelf,
And I don't feel so well myself.”

Arthur Guiterman (1871–1943) United States writer

On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/24.html

Fear , Feeling

“A lot of the old movie stars couldn't act their way out of a box of wet tissue paper, but they were successful because they had distinctive personalities. They were predictable brands of breakfast cereal: on Wednesdays we had Quaker Oats and Gary Cooper; on Fridays we had Wheaties and Clark Gable. They were off-the-shelf products you expected always to be the same, actors and actresses with likable personalities who played themselves more or less the same role the same way every time out.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

Way , Star , Time , Success

“In the Middle Ages, people still reckoned on God - the cathedrals they built make that plain. But as time went by man tried to get rid of God. Marxism is nothing else than a gigantic attempt to put God on the shelf. They have tried to replace Him by technology. Scholars, in their attempt to prove that God does not exist, have resorted to the pen. And the masses have shouted: "Religion is the opium of the people.”

Wilhelm Busch (pastor) (1897–1966) German pastor and writer

Not for me! We use it when we shouldn't. p. 157
Jesus Our Destiny

God , People , Age , Religion

“Law is not a mausoleum. It is not an antique to be taken down, dusted, admired and put back on the shelf. It is like an old but vigorous tree, having roots in history, yet continuously taking new grafts and putting out new sprouts and occasionally dropping dead wood. It is essentially a social process, the end product of which is justice and hence it must change with changing social values. Otherwise there will be estrangement between law and justice and law will cease to have legitimacy.”

P.N. Bhagwati

P.N. Bhagwati Motilal Padmapat v State of Uttar Pradesh AIR 1979 SC 621; 118 ITR 326.

Justice , Law , History , Tree

“I'm aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of the chapters in The Catcher in the Rye. Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It's almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf out of their reach.”

Jerome David Salinger (1919–2010) American writer

As quoted in The Twentieth Century (1972) by Caroline Farrar Ware, p. 429

Children , Books

“That is to say that every single book will be magnetized, will be ordered under complicated mathematical clusters, by related subjects, and semantic markers. You will state your questions, or the subject you are interested in, and the computer will find the books for you. Instataneous retrieval brings with it enormous changes in our relation to the history of a subject, because there is a cut-off point in all these systems beond which the previous books are no longer relevant. They have been adequately subsumed in the later ones. You have a completely different way of organsing knowledge—an immensely efficient and in many ways powerfully logical way, but which blocks the essential motion of the hand reaching along a shelf and stumbling on what it did not know was there. When these great knowledge and data-banks, as they are called, are operative there will come a whole change in the way the human mind and eye live with books.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Do Books Matter? (ed. Brian Baumfield), ISBN 0705700143, p. 28.
Do Books Matter?

Books , Way , History , Mathematics

“The shelf-life of a heroine is very limited. But I feel that a true artiste should never retire. Even now, I can't say no to a role that excites me. But I don't see films as my career any longer. I do it for the fun and satisfaction.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quoted in Guru Dutt was my mentor: Waheeda, 23 June 2009, 15 December 2013, The Hindu http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-06-23/news-interviews/28202984_1_guru-dutt-rojulu-maraayi-waheeda-rehman,
Quote

Life , Feeling

“This was a wonderful role. I played a Sicilian baron. They had incredible locations, for instance this majestic castle, I couldn't believe how beautiful it was! We also shot a scene in Hadrian's Villa, in a place called Sanctuario di Ercole. I had a great costume - the costume designers also worked on Visconti's GATTOPARDO. It's a mystery to me why they wouldn't let the film out. It's terrible for an actor: You think you have a big break, then the film just rots on the shelf! Also, the director was a very likeable person, very calm on the set. A wonderful movie.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Beauty , Thinking , Personality

“The positive shelf life of a new stadium has shrunk considerably. The new parks in themselves can't be a long-term or mid-term panacea.”

Bud Selig (1934) American baseball executive

Life

“So long have I been languished on the shelf
I must give all proceedings to myself.”

Ian Dury (1942–2000) English musician

"Spasticus Autisticus" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6isXNVdguI8, On Countdown (Australia) 1981

“And their eyes are all asking
Are you in or are you out?
And I think, oh man
What is this about?
Tonight you can't put me
Up on any shelf
Cuz I came here alone
And I'm gonna leave by myself.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

In or Out
Song lyrics

Thinking

“[S]ocialism has never been a particularly stable or coherent program, a point I made in these pages in 2010. It has always been best defined as whatever socialists want it to be at any given moment. That is because its chief utility is as a romantic indictment of the capitalist status quo. As many of the defenders of the new socialist craze admit, socialism is the off-the-shelf alternative to capitalism, which has been in bad odor since at least the financial crisis of 2008.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)

“Even though Kurt died in the most horrific way possible, there is this mythology and romanticism that surrounds him, because he's 27 forever. The shelf life of an artist or musician isn't particularly long. Kurt has gotten to icon status because he will never age. He will always be that relevant in that time and always be beautiful.”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

" Frances Bean Cobain on Life After Kurt's Death: An Exclusive Q&A http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/frances-bean-life-after-kurt-cobain-death-exclusive-interview-20150408" (2015)

Life , Age , Beauty , Way

“If you don't include your women graduates in your breeding pool and leave them on the shelf, you would end up a more stupid society… So what happens? There will be less bright people to support dumb people in the next generation. That's a problem.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

National Day Rally, 1983. Cited in The Coming Population Crash: And Our Planet's Surprising Future, Fred Pearce
1980s

Women , People , Stupidity , Support

“A lot of the times with porn, it's instant fame. The only thing I can compare it to is being a child actor. You get it fast, then there's a shelf-life for it. With mainstream films, you've got to go to acting classes, you've really got to hustle, there's so much competition, but with these [porn] guys, if you're good-looking with a great body, you're in like Flynn.”

John Roecker (1966) American film director

[The Bay Area Reporter, Erotic superstars, up-close & personal: here!TV's 'Everything You Wanted to Know About Gay Porn Stars', December 4, 2008, David, Lamble, Benro Enterprises, Inc.]

Life , Guy , Time

“The dust and silence of the upper shelf.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

On Milton (1825)

Silence

“An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap. (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose. (7) Very little development will be required. It will use off-the-shelf components. (8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now. On the other hand a practical reactor can be distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) It is being built now. (2) It is behind schedule. (3) It requires an immense amount of development on apparently trivial items. (4) It is very expensive. (5) It takes a long time to build because of its engineering development problems. (6) It is large. (7) It is heavy. (8) It is complicated.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Paper Reactors, Real Reactors (1953)

Problem , Study , Light , Time

“Sonny sits by his window and thinks to himself,
How it's strange that some rooms are like cages,
Sonny's yearbook from high school is down from the shelf,
And he idly thumbs through the pages,
Some have died, some have fled from themselves,
On a struggle from here to get there,
Sonny wanders beyond his interior walls,
Runs his hands through his thinning brown hair.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

The Obvious Child
Song lyrics, The Rhythm of the Saints (1990)

School , Thinking

“One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf.”

Bart D. Ehrman book Jesus, Interrupted

Source: Jesus, Interrupted (2009), Ch. 1: 'A Historical Assault on Faith'

Books , Error , Learning , Appearance

“There is another earthquake in Kyoto. We appreciate it lyrically. A slide of dust slips along a roof gully. A large tree of golden petals shakes and the petals drift to the floor. Birds fly up. Bottles of clear liquid in a shop quiver on a shelf. The water in a puddle shimmers reflections up a wall. A collection of grey roof tiles shift and -- ever faster -- begin to slide down a roof slope.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Section 56
8 1/2 Women

Bird , Tree , Water , Flying

“Generally, disruptive innovations were technologically straightforward, consisting of off-the-shelf components put together in a product architecture that was often simpler than prior approaches. They offered less of what customers in established markets wanted and so could rarely be initially employed there. They offered a different package of attributes valued only in emerging markets remote from, and unimportant to, the mainstream”

Clayton M. Christensen (1952–2020) Mormon academic

Source: 1990s, The Innovator's Dilemma (1997), p. 15

“And you, my fine poet, who thought that the earth
To another such minstrel could never give birth,
Already your works are all thrown on the shelf,
And their author condemn'd as an ignorant elf.—
Yes; look thro' the world, and this truth you will find
That, once out of sight, you are soon out of mind.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Fable (Imitated from the French of La Motte.)
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)

Truth , World , Birth

“"Non-fiction", on the other hand, declares itself to be the carrier of fact, an expression of reality, and thus of truth. Why then does most fact-based work have a remarkably short shelf life? The reply might be that additional facts come along. That we are learning all the time. In that case, it was never an expression of reality or truth. And even if the facts are overtaken, the arguments built upon them should not date with such terrifying rapidity. Decade-old serious "non-fiction" often seems arcane, irrelevant. The written style itself seems to become old-fashioned. Two-centuries-old decent "fiction" on the other hand can easily remain fresh.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

On Equilibrium (2001)

Life , Truth , Fashion , Reality

“I pulled On The Road off the shelf and found myself reading it between classes, and at that time in my life it was exactly what I craved, exactly what I needed to hear. I thought, “That’s the way, that’s the ideal life, that’s great. You get in a car and you drive and you see your friends and you end up in a city for a night and you go out drinking and you catch up and you share these really intense experiences. And then you’re on the road and you’re doing it again.” The romance of the road, particularly from Kerouac’s work, encapsulated how I wanted to live. I found a way to do it by being a musician, which is what I always wanted to be. The traveling and the being on tour and being away from home set a precedent for me where I thought, “Oh yeah, this is how it works.”
But then in reading Big Sur, it’s the end of the road. You end up with a series of failed relationships and you end up being an alcoholic and in your late 30s, and not having any kind of real grip on the lives of the people around you. That’s the potential other end of the spectrum when you’re never tied to anybody or anything. I run the risk of losing touch with the people in my life that mean the most to me because I have made the decision to live like this.”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Source: The Meaning Of Life, I

Life , People , Alcohol , Cars

“Summertime, 1950, I recognized Isherwood browsing in a Santa Monica bookstore. My book had just come out, so I grabbed a copy off the shelf, signed it and gave it to him. His face fell and my heart sank, but two days later he called and said, "Do you know what you've done?" I asked, "What?" And he simply told me to read his review in the Times. His rave turned my life around; the book immediately made the best-seller lists and has been in print ever since.
He was very kind in introducing me to various people he thought I should know, like Aldous Huxley, who had been my literary hero since Brave New World came out.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

On the chance meeting with Christopher Isherwood just after publication of The Martian Chronicles which led to fame and acclaim outside of SF fandom.
Playboy interview (1996)

Life , People , Books , World

“I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Attributed

Literature , Learning

“Business information systems can be either designed as custom applications or purchased as off-the-shelf standard solutions. The development of custom applications is generally expensive and is often plagued by uncertainties, such as the selection of appropriate development tools, the duration of the development cycle, or the difficulties involved in assessing costs. Thus, empirical surveys have shown that between half to two-thirds of information systems projects fail. The current tendency to shift from individual development to standardized, prepackaged software solutions is therefore not surprising.”

August-Wilhelm Scheer (1941) German business theorist

August-Wilhelm Scheer, and Frank Habermann. " Enterprise resource planning: making ERP a success http://ecis.seattleu.edu/courses/ecis464spring04/Articles/Making%20ERP%20a%20Success.pdf." Communications of the ACM 43.4 (2000): 57-61.

Business

“There is current in our land (and several European countries) at this moment a kind of nit-picking worship of historic im-po-tence. They say, they say, that Bach must not be interpreted and that he must have no emotion, his notes speak for themselves. You want know what that is? Pure unadulterated rot! Bach has the red blood. He has the communion with the people! He has all of this amazing spirit and imagine that you could put all the music on one side of the agenda with his great interpretation and great feeling and put the greatest man of all right up on top of a dusty shelf underneath some glass case in a museum and say that he must not be interpreted! They're full of you know what and they are so untalented that they had to hide behind this thing 'cause they couldn't get in the House of Music any other way!”

Virgil Fox (1912–1980) American musician

Heavy Organ (introduction to the Bach Toccata and Fugue in Dm, BWV 565)

People , Music , Way , Feeling

“The world of shelf space is a zero-sum game: One product displaces another.”

Chris Anderson book The Long Tail

Source: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006), Ch. 2, p. 40

World , Game

“We can no longer expect the one big book, the single achievement, to be an author's claim to posterity's regard. We shall be more inclined to assess the stature of a novelist by his ability to create what the French call an oeuvre, to present fragments of an individual vision in book after book, to build, if not a War and Peace or Ulysses, at least a shelf.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, The Novel Now: A Student's Guide to Contemporary Fiction (1967)

War , Books , Peace

“Somewhere in my closet
There's a cardboard box just sittin' on a shelf.
It's full of faded memories
And it's been there ever since the night you left.Oh, just forgotten photographs
To remind me of the past.
Oh, but I can still see everything just fine.
Who needs pictures with a memory like mine?
Yeah, who needs pictures with a memory like mine?”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Who Needs Pictures, written by Brad Paisley, Chris DuBois and Frank Rogers.
Song lyrics, Who Needs Pictures (1999)

Memory , Past , Night , Box

“The Bible says God gave herb for the service of man and bread to strengthen man's heart. Did you know bread used to strengthen your heart? But keep in mind, you know, "the love of money, the root of all evil." They learned years ago, if they take out the vitamin E, the lecithin, and the omega-3 fatty acids (they take them out of the wheat; and make the bread with white flour), the bread lasts for months. But the people started dying of heart attacks and strokes and circulation problems. See, it's a simple formula: the whiter the bread, the quicker you're dead. Now it's not the white bread that's killing you. It's what's not in the bread that's killing you. See, God made bread to strengthen your heart. Remember the Bible talked about "our daily bread." But people who are making bread to sell, got tired of having half of it go bad on the shelf where they couldn't sell it. So they had to figure out a way to make their bread last longer to increase profits.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

Love , Money , God , People

“The most noteworthy development of the open fireplace took place in 1796, when Englishman Count Rumford published his comprehensive essay, "Chimney Fireplaces."… the inclined fireback… increased fireplace efficiency by providing an area of greater radiation. For the purpose of breaking up the current of smoke in the event of chimney down draft, the back smoke shelf of Rumford's improved fireplace ended abruptly—a practice strictly adhered to by fireplace masons to this day.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“"The cardinal difficulty," said MacPhee, "in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, 'Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you'll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.' The female for this is, 'Put that in the other one in there.' And then if you ask them, 'in where?' they say, 'in there, of course.'”

Clive Staples Lewis book That Hideous Strength

There is consequently a phatic hiatus."
Source: That Hideous Strength (1945), Ch. 8 : Moonlight at Belbury, section 2

Women , Men , Sex

“To take another simile [that the brain is like a machine], if we imagine a great library containing books which have a vast number of cross references one to another, then should one whole shelf be burned, it might be possible to reconstruct the lost books -- but somewhat less perfectly than at first.”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: On Human Communication (1957), On Cognition and Recognition, p. 302

Books , Imagination

“For the translator of poetry, there is no activity that brings you into a closer, more intimate contact with language, both the second language and your own language, which translation allows you to experience freshly. Of course, translation is the impossible art which is why it attracts often the best minds, at least those driven by difficulty. The best metaphor I know for translation is from my friend Eamon Grennan, who translated the poems of Leopardi. It's like walking in a clear mountain stream, looking at colorful stones in the water. You find one so gorgeous, you put it in your pocket, take it home and put it on a shelf. In the morning you are surprised that the stone looks so dull and without luster. You have the stone, but you have removed it from the water of its home language so it has lost its luster.”

Billy Collins (1941) American poet

Interview with Kritya: In the Name of Poetry

Art , Color , Home , Mountain

“Showed me pictures in the gallery
Showed me novels on the shelf
Put my hands across the table
Gave me knowledge of myself.
Showed me visions, showed me nightmares
Gave me dreams that never end
Showed me light out of the tunnel
When there was darkness all around instead.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Tore Down a la Rimbaud.
Song lyrics, A Sense of Wonder (1985)

Dreams , Knowledge , Light

“A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls up another.”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

Books

“Observe where the islands are located, how the continental shelf extends over that area and connects the coast with the islands. It's easy to see the natural correlation between them and the mainland. Indeed, the Falklands belonged, and will belong, to us both historically and geographically.”

Leopoldo Galtieri (1926–2003) Argentine military dictator

Reportaje de Oriana Fallaci a Leopoldo F. Galtieri http://archivohistorico.educ.ar/content/reportaje-de-oriana-fallaci-leopoldo-f-galtieri#sthash.ZQrMQt2O.dpuf, Revista El porteño, August 1982

Nature

“Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

The Wall Street Journal (December 29, 2011).
Attributed

Business , Life

“Money money money money money money money money money. Let no one say it has no place in a love story. It has a particular place. It is something on the right shelf.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Arguably

Love , Money

“And I’ve been on the road for too long, I know I have, because I was in the supermarket the other day, and I saw this tiny, heartbreaking can of beans. And it really made me want to cry. I just thought how old or sick or small do you need to be to need those beans? And it was on a high shelf, you know, you’d be climbing the ladder for days just to get at those four beans.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On warning on cigarettes boxes.
What It Is (2009)

Cry

“Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.”

Philip Larkin book High Windows

"This Be The Verse," High Windows (1974) [April ? 1971]
This Be The Verse (1974)

“In the Clunie Public Library in Sacramento, in those last years of a legally segregated America, there was no segregated shelf for Negro writers. Frederick Douglass on the same casement with Alexis de Tocqueville, Benjamin Franklin. Today, when our habit is willfully to confuse literature with sociology, with sorting, with trading in skins, we imagine the point of a "life" is to address some sort of numerical average, common obstacle or persecution. Here is a book "about" teenaged Chinese-American girls. So it is shelved.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Life , Books , Imagination , Girl

“It's kind of a world neighborhood bookstore. They ﬂy in from Prague or Tokyo — we had a whole busload of South Africans saying, "They've got my books in here." … The president of the Czech Republic [Václav Havel] came by to pay us a state visit, turned to the shelf, and his book was there: "Look, they've got my book."”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

Dennis McNally, "The Beat Goes On", http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/notebook/2003/07/ma_462_01.html MotherJones, July/August 2003.: On City Lights
2000s

Books , World