Books

"Thee will I sing in comely wainscot bound And golden verge enclosing thee around; The faithful horn before, from age to age Preserving thy invulnerable page. Behind thy patron saint in armor shines With sword and lance to guard the sacred lines; Th' instructive handle's at the bottom fixed Lest wrangling critics should pervert the text."

"That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it."

"Go, little Book! From this my solitude I cast thee on the Waters,—go thy ways: And if, as I believe, thy vein be good, The World will find thee after many days. Be it with thee according to thy worth: Go, little Book; in faith I send thee forth."

"O for a Booke and a shadie nooke, eyther in-a-doore or out; With the grene leaves whisp'ring overhede, or the Streete cries all about. Where I maie Reade all at my ease, both of the Newe and Olde; For a jollie goode Booke whereon to looke, is better to me than Golde."

"Un livre est un ami qui ne trompe jamais."

"Gentlemen use books as Gentlewomen handle their flowers, who in the morning stick them in their heads, and at night strawe them at their heeles."

"You importune me, Tucca, to present you with my books. I shall not do so; for you want to sell, not to read, them."

"When St. Thomas Aquinas was asked in what manner a man might best become learned, he answered, "By reading one book." The homo unius libri is indeed proverbially formidable to all conversational figurantes."

"They are for company the best friends, in Doubt's Counsellors, in Damps Comforters, Time's Prospective the Home Traveller's Ship or Horse, the busie Man's best Recreation, the Opiate of idle Weariness, the Mindes best Ordinary, Nature's Garden and Seed-plot of Immortality."

"Books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good: Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow."

"Books, the children of the brain."

"Within that awful volume lies The mystery of mysteries!"

"All books are either dreams or swords, You can cut, or you can drug, with words. * * * * * * My swords are tempered for every speech, For fencing wit, or to carve a breach Through old abuses the world condones."

"Books are sepulchres of thought."

"If I were asked what book is better than a cheap book, I would answer that there is one book better than a cheap book, and that is a book honestly come by."

"As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book."

"Distrahit animum librorum multitudo."

"Some books are drenched sands, On which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps, Like a wrecked argosy."

"Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed."

"Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge."

"Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books, Or surely you'll grow double; Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble?"

"I fear the man of one book."

"But every page having an ample marge, And every marge enclosing in the midst A square of text that looks a little blot."

"Aquinas was once asked, with what compendium a man might become learned? He answered "By reading of one book.""

"Nor wyll suffer this boke By hooke ne by crooke Printed to be."

"Their books of stature small they take in hand, Which with pellucid horn secured are; To save from finger wet the letters fair."

"A 2003 book that investors can learn much from is Bull! by Maggie Mahar. Two other books I’d recommend are The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, and In an Uncertain World by Bob Rubin. All three are well-reported and well-written. Additionally, Jason Zweig last year did a first-class job in revising The Intelligent Investor, my favorite book on investing."

"The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author."

"Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret room Piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large,—where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning's dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books! At last, because the time was ripe, I chanced upon the poets."

"Laws die, Books never."

"We get no good By being ungenerous, even to a book, And calculating profits—so much help By so much reading. It is rather when We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth— 'Tis then we get the right good from a book."

"Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?"

"Why is marking a book indispensable to reading it? First, it keeps you awake — not merely conscious, but wide awake. Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written...Third, writing your reactions down helps you to remember the thoughts of the author...Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author, It is the highest respect you can pay him."

"Don’t mind me, Miss Adams. You ever smell new books? Binding, pages, print. Like fresh bread when you’re hungry."

"What traitors books can be! You think they’re backing you up, and then they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives."

"Worthy books Are not companions—they are solitudes: We lose ourselves in them and all our cares."

"The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn't know this, of course you still can't understand what I mean when I say all this."

"Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute."

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention."

"One reader is better than another in proportion as he is able of a greater range of activity in reading and exerts more effort."

"Protect me from oil, water, insects and loose bonding, and above all, O Lord, protect me from falling into the hands of a fool."

"Putting the right book in the right kid’s hands is kind of like giving that kid superpowers. Because one book leads to the next book and the next book and the next book and that is how a world-view grows. That is how you nourish thought."

"Do you ever read any of the books you burn?" He laughed. "That's against the law!" "Oh. Of course."

"The true University of these days is a collection of Books."

"In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream."

"There is no book so bad," said the bachelor, "but something good may be found in it."

"God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race."

"For out of olde feldes, as men seith, Cometh al this newe corn fro yeer to yere; And out of olde bokes, in good feith, Cometh al this newe science that men lere."

"There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person."

"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme."