Books Quotes - Page 82

A castle of defense, a bastion of mightA fort where the wise teach the young to fightAn armory of weapons, sharp as hooksAre wrapped in leather and shelved as books

I was thinking, "So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.

When this book is mould,And a book of manyWaiting to be soldFor a casual penny,In a little open case,In a street unclean and cluttered,Where a heavy mud is spatteredFrom the passing drays,Stranger, pause and look;From the dust of agesLift this little book,Turn the tattered pages,Read me, do not let me die!Search the fading letters, findingSteadfast in the broken bindingAll that once was I!

The paper is my savior, the pen my blood, to words that shed my world.

The point is, Jenna, no one is normal or perfect like that house you see across the street. Everyone suffers from their own struggles, whether they’re big or small.

When a child keeps asking you to tell him/her a story, what they instinctively really want to know is their true purpose and mission in life. Sadly, this knowledge was never sought out by their parents, and explains why children's books are a very hot and lucrative industry. Instead of telling your child how to become a compassionate citizen of the world, or how to live a meaningful existence by being a positive asset to humanity, you are conditioned by society to simply read your kid a fairytale.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but those well-arranged words are worth a multi-million-dollar motion picture.

On my website there's a quote from the writer Anthony Burgess: "The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind." I've always found that inspiring because the written word, as an art form, is unlike any other: movies, TV, music, they're shared experiences, but books aren't like that. The relationship between a writer and a reader is utterly unique to those two individuals. The world that forms in your head as you read a book will be slightly different to that experienced by every other reader. Anywhere. Ever. Reading is very personal, a communication from one mind to another, something which can't be exactly copied, or replicated, or directly shared. If I read the work of, say, one of the great Victorian novelists, it's like a gift from the past, a momentary connection to another's thoughts. Their ideas are down on paper, to be picked up by me, over a century later. Writers can speak individually to readers across a year, or ten years, or a thousand. That's why I love books.

In books there are chapters to separate out the moments, to show that time is going by and things are changing, and sometimes the parts even have titles that are full of promise—'The Meeting', 'Hope', 'Downfall'—like paintings do. But in life there's nothing like that, no titles or signs or warnings, nothing to say 'Beware, danger!' or 'Frequent landslides' or 'Disillusion ahead'. In life you stand all alone in your costume, and too bad if it's in tatters.

The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.

If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.

I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief... I'm not in the business of offending people. I find the books upholding certain values that I think are important, such as life is immensely valuable and this world is an extraordinarily beautiful place. We should do what we can to increase the amount of wisdom in the

We have more choice than ever before about where and how we buy and read books.

Each of them is a book through which other books dream. (referring to Nodier's SMARRA and TRILBY)

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.

A real and admirable writer is the one who can write good books but can take criticisms better.

He was like a book, where each chapter picks up pace until you can't put it down. That's when you know you've made a friend - when you want to read more of his story.

Camerado this is no book. Who touches this touches a man.

There are books which take rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.

Anger does not change the fact. The will to take control is everything.

Never underestimate a bookworm

The thing about books was, the more you read and liked them, the more you wanted to have on hand to read. Before you knew it you needed more bookshelves, and then all of the sudden they filled your house.

I ate them like salad, books were my sandwich for lunch, my tiffin and dinner and midnight munch. I tore out the pages, ate them with salt, doused them with relish, gnawed on the bindings, turned the chapters with my tongue! Books by the dozen, the score and the billion. I carried so many home I was hunchbacked for years. Philosophy, art history, politics, social science, the poem, the essay, the grandiose play, you name 'em, I ate 'em.

The library is like a candy store where everything is free.

Teddy bears are best because they understand it's nice to be alone.

To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions—there we have none.

Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life’.

Whenever you are in transition it is always important to choose the words that you use. You call it crises in your life and I call it transition.

There are so many works of the mind, so much humanity, that to disburden ourselves of ourselves is an understandable temptation. Open a book and a voice speaks. A world, more or less alien or welcoming, emerges to enrich a reader's store of hypotheses about how life is to be understood. As with scientific hypotheses, even failure is meaningful, a test of the boundaries of credibility. So many voices, so many worlds, we can weary of them. If there were only one human query to be heard in the universe, and it was only the sort of thing we were always inclined to wonder about--Where did all this come from? or, Why could we never refrain from war?--we would hear in it a beauty that would overwhelm us. So frail a sound, so brave, so deeply inflected by the burden of thought, that we would ask, Whose voice is this? We would feel a barely tolerable loneliness, hers and ours. And if there were another hearer, not one of us, how starkly that hearer would apprehend what we are and were.

I wasn’t reading poetry because my aim was to work my way through English Literature in Prose A–Z.But this was different.I started to cry.(…)The unfamiliar and beautiful play made things bearable that day, and the things it made bearable were another failed family—the first one was not my fault, but all adopted children blame themselves. The second failure was definitely my fault.I was confused about sex and sexuality, and upset about the straightforward practical problems of where to live, what to eat, and how to do my A levels.I had no one to help me, but the T.S. Eliot helped me.So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.

Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.

-- that books were mirrors, reflective in sometimes unpredictable ways.

Books and knowledge are the two most powerful drugs.

What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!

I collected speech from so called "Smart", "Genius" nation... the judge is going to be made from you... ...Don't worry "Notes of A Dead Man Sequel" are going to be one damn long journey.

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

I am a machine condemned to devour books.

No privacy left. No manners.

It is the mess that readers love. The fact that sometimes the people who love us the most aren't people we're related to, but people who join our family later. The book acknowledges how difficult family relationship are, and this fuss just proves it.

Literature is light.

Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge.

We need knew knights, but without swords.

I can't sleep,I can't but when all else fails I just breath...

... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.

There was something appealing in thinking of a character with a secret life that her author knew nothing about. Slipping off while the author's back was turned, to find love in her own way. Showing up just in time to deliver the next bit of dialogue with an innocent face.

She's a sailboat and I'm an anchor, pulling us both down.

A good book is an event in my life.

In fact, when I finally shuffle off this mortalcoil, you will have to pry a book out of my cold, dead hands.

The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance; music, for instance. You must take your chance, boy. The choice has been all yours.

There's a reason my only friends are written words

The first step to Happiness is deciding exactly what kind of life you want. That kinda comes from experience.

All this have I proved by wisdom: I said, I will be wise; but it was far from me. That which is far off, exceeding deep, who can find it out?

Wherever there is somebody else, a war is not far away.

Will grinned. “Some of these books are dangerous,” he said. “It’s wise to be careful.”“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”“I’m not sure a book has ever changed me,” said Will. “Well, there is one volume that promises to teach one how to turn oneself into an entire flock of sheep—”“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry,” said Tessa

Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.

When I'm really into a novel, I'm seeing the world differently during that time— not just for the hour or so in the day when I get to read. I'm actually walking around in a haze, spellbound by the book and looking at everything through a different prism.

They take their drama firsthand, in the real world, while I prefer the drama of fictional characters–in worlds where things happen for a reason, where questions are answered, where conflicts are always resolved.

I enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy them whenever I please.

Great writers, I discovered, were not to be bowed down before and worshipped, but embraced and befriended. Their names resounded through history not because they had massive brows and thought deep incomprehensible thoughts, but because they opened windows in the mind, they put their arms round you and showed you things you always knew but never dared to believe. Even if their names were terrifyingly foreign and intellectual sounding, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire or Cavafy, they turned out to be charming and wonderful and quite unalarming after all.

This is a woman who didn’t want her viewpoints challenged, nor to see the views of the half of the world that comprises men. Her assumption is that all male authors are sexist and that their books distort the views of women....that’s bigoted and despicable: the form of feminism that sees men as the enemy from the outset, and seeks to reinforce that prejudice by reading only books that keep her in her safe space.....The future, in both life and books, is men and women together, with a mutual understanding that can come only from learning about each other’s thoughts. [About Caitlin Moran's sexist statement that girls shouldn't read any books written by men.]