Books Quotes - Page 2

Something clicked inside Ortez mind, like the bolt of a door latch being released. Man’s first encounter with sentient alien life was a disaster called the Gimp War in the history books. The aliens simply began an all out onslaught without any warning. Fortunately the Human race proved a little more difficult to dispose of than the aliens thought. The Gimp, or Ruminarii as they were called, were driven off and hadn’t been heard from since. Their origins were still a mystery. This was not a Ruminarii ship, but this encounter might have similar repercussions. And Commander Dayne Ortez aged 26, realized the meaning of this.

Christina Engela

The pleasure of reading is the greatest solitude.

Lailah Gifty Akita

The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth.

Criss Jami

Self-publishing a shitty book doesn't make you an author any more than singing in the shower makes you a rockstar or squeezing your pimple makes you a dermatologist.

Oliver Markus

To transform a grimace into a sound sounds impossible, yet it is possible to transform a vision into music, to go outside an enslaved personality, to become impersonal by transforming into sand, into water, into light.

Dejan Stojanovic

Writing a story is like going on a date—you will spoil it if you aren't living in the moment.

Pawan Mishra

A writer can do without food for a few hours, but not without the sight of books.

Pawan Mishra

Ideas either age like fine wine or rot like potatoes over time.

Pawan Mishra

Poetry isn’t an island, it is the bridge. Poetry isn’t a ship, it is the lifeboat. Poetry isn’t swimming. Poetry is water.

Kamand Kojouri

It’s no big deal. It’s kind of like a tattoo. It won’t hurt, not too much, just a few stitches and it’ll be all over. It’s really interesting how it’s done. You won’t believe where your soul hides. Go on, take a guess. Where do you think it is?

Nathan Reese Maher

Some looks are heavier than the thickest books because they carry the saddest stories of life!

Mehmet Murat ildan

I always have enjoyed people to read for me or to have the chace to listen of how they narrate a book.

Deyth Banger

A young woman forced to keep drunks supplied with beer and siblings with cleanunderwear—instead of being allowed to pursue something higher —stores up greatreserves of vitality, a vitality never dreamed of by university students yawning over theirbooks. (...) The difference between the universitygraduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in theextent of vitality and self-confidence. The elan with which Tereza flung herself into hernew Prague existence was both frenzied and precarious. She seemed to be expectingsomeone to come up to her any day and say, What are you doing here? Go back whereyou belong!

Milan Kundera

I often buy print books only after I've read them in some digital form or other. It's my odd way of keeping the physical presence of the best among multitudes. And I only have one shelf.

Joyce Rachelle

Villainessa Tittel was a hired killer, an assassin by trade. She had enjoyed the best education and had been trained by assassins who had (until then at least) been considered the best in the business. She had turned to ‘cleaning’ as an occupation because she really enjoyed endings more than beginnings – and anyway, she didn’t need to know her mark’s entire pedigree or life’s story, or to have some kind of facetious moral justification just to collect her fee. Unsurprisingly, when she did read – on those rare occasions – her books were always dog-eared from the back.

Christina Engela

Michelle, since the first day I met you I knew you were the one for me. I knew that I would make you my wife. I love waking up to your beautiful face every morning and seeing you before I close my eyes each night. I love you with everything in me, and I promise to be the man that you need for the rest of our lifetime together. Would you do me the honor of being my wife?

Blaque Diamond

Their conversation ceased abruptly with the entry of an oddly-shaped man whose body resembled a certain vegetable. He was a thickset fellow with calloused and jaundiced skin and a patch of brown hair, a frizzy upheaval. We will call him Bell Pepper. Bell Pepper sidled up beside The Drippy Man and looked at the grilled cheese in his hand. The Drippy Man, a bit uncomfortable at the heaviness of the gaze, politely apologized and asked Bell Pepper if he would like one. “Why is one of your legs fatter than the other?” asked Bell Pepper.t The Drippy Man realized Bell Pepper was not looking at his sandwich but towards the inconsistency of his leg sizes. “You always get your kicks pointing out defects?” retorted The Drippy Man. “Just curious. Never seen anything like it before.” “I was raised not to feel shame and hide my legs in baggy pants.” “So you flaunt your deformity by wearing short shorts?” “Like you flaunt your pockmarks by not wearing a mask?” Bell Pepper backed away, kicking wide the screen door, making an exit to a porch over hanging a dune of sand that curved into a jagged upward jab of rock. “He is quite sensitive,” commented The Dry Advisor. “Who is he?” “A fellow who once manipulated the money in your wallet but now curses the fellow who does.

Jeff Phillips

…secondhand bookstores have pilgrims. The words out of print are a call to arms for those who seek a Holy Grail made of paper and ink.

Kathleen Tessaro

Inconveniently, books are all the pages in them, not just the ones you choose to read.

Don Paterson

The e-reading revolution may have reached our shores this year but it has yet to reckon with Australia's summer holidays. Intense sunlight plays havoc with screens and the sand invades every nook and cranny, so as convenient and sexy as your new iPad may be, the battered paperback, its pages pocked and swollen from contact with briny hands, will likely remain the beach format of choice for a few years yet.

Geordie Williamson

I spent much of my prison time reading. I must have read over 200 large books, mostly fictional stories about the American pioneers, the Vikings, Mafia, etc. As long as I was engrossed in a book, I was not in prison. Reading was my escape.

Frazier Glenn Miller

I didn't go to bookshops to buy. That's a little bourgeois. I went because they were civilized places. It made me happy there were people who sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote and there were other people who devoted their lives to making those words into books. It was lovely. Like standing in the middle of civilization.

Jerry Pinto

The library made me feel safe, as if every question had an answer and there was nothing to be afraid of, as long as I could sort through another volume.

Dee-Williams

distringit librorum multitudo (the abundance of books is distraction)

Seneca

[A]s Agatha Swanburne once said, 'To be kept waiting is unfortunate, but to be kept waiting with nothing interesting to read is a tragedy of Greek proportions.

Maryrose Wood

How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it! We've started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumors; the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much? I've heard the rumors about hate too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don't, that's sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!

Ray Bradbury

Books smell and feel better. They have that wonderful thingness of turning the pages.

Neil Gaiman

I need words and print... I need print like an addict. I could live without it, perhaps. But I hope I never have to try.

Margaret Drabble

Personally, I believe "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I'd rather use film cameras and vinyl records and cathode ray tubes than any sort of the digital technology available. Look around! The streets are full of people who would rather have their eyes on their cell phones than on the world around them! Scientists are researching technology to erase specific memories from people! Our thrown-away digital technology is showing up overseas in huge piles of toxic heavy metals and plastic! And yet there are still people who keep wanting technology and the future to keep going. They dream of flying cars, or humanoid robots, of populated cities on Mars. But do we really NEED this stuff? Maybe before we try to keep turning our world into an episode of The Jetsons, we should focus more on the problems that are surprisingly being overlooked now more than ever. Before we design another stupid cell phone or build a flying car, let's put a stop to racism, to sexism, to homophobia, to war. Let's stop buying all our "American" products from sweat shops overseas and let's end poverty in third-world countries. Let's let film photography never go obsolete, let's let print books continue to be printed. Let's stop domestic violence and child abuse and prostitution and this world's heavy reliance on prescription drugs. Let's stop terrorism, let's stop animal cruelty, , let's stop overpopulation and urbanization, let's stop the manufacture of nuclear weapons......I mean come on, we have all these problems to solve, but digital tech enthusiasts are more concerned that we don't have flying cars or robotic maids yet? That's pathetic.

Rebecca McNutt

Olly: jesus. is there a girl on this planet who doesn't love mr.darcyMadeline: All girls love Mr. Darcy?Olly: are you kidding? even my sister loves darcy and she doesn't love anybodyMadeline: She must love somebody. I'm sure she loves youOlly: what's so great about darcy?Madeline: That's not a serious questionOlly: he's a snobMadeline: But he overcomes it and eventually realizes that character matters more than class! He's a man open to learning life's lessons! Also, he's completely gorgeous and noble and brooding and poetic. Did I mention gorgeous? Also, he loves Elizabeth beyond all reason.

Nicola Yoon

It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed.

Alberto Manguel

Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.

Kelly Link

CUSTOMER: If I were to, say... meet the love of my life in this bookshop, what section do you think they would be standing in?

Jen Campbell

I truly believe that if you have more friends than books, you have too many friends. Or not enough books. Probably both.

Zoë Marriott

It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd.

Penelope Lively

Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food.

Douglas Adams

Some like to believe it's the book that chooses the person.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library,'The medicines of the soul.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]1.tHomer – Iliad, Odyssey2.tThe Old Testament3.tAeschylus – Tragedies4.tSophocles – Tragedies5.tHerodotus – Histories6.tEuripides – Tragedies7.tThucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War8.tHippocrates – Medical Writings9.tAristophanes – Comedies10.tPlato – Dialogues11.tAristotle – Works12.tEpicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus13.tEuclid – Elements14.tArchimedes – Works15.tApollonius of Perga – Conic Sections16.tCicero – Works17.tLucretius – On the Nature of Things18.tVirgil – Works19.tHorace – Works20.tLivy – History of Rome21.tOvid – Works22.tPlutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia23.tTacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania24.tNicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic25.tEpictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion26.tPtolemy – Almagest27.tLucian – Works28.tMarcus Aurelius – Meditations29.tGalen – On the Natural Faculties30.tThe New Testament31.tPlotinus – The Enneads32.tSt. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine33.tThe Song of Roland34.tThe Nibelungenlied35.tThe Saga of Burnt Njál36.tSt. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica37.tDante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy38.tGeoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales39.tLeonardo da Vinci – Notebooks40.tNiccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy41.tDesiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly42.tNicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres43.tThomas More – Utopia44.tMartin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises45.tFrançois Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel46.tJohn Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion47.tMichel de Montaigne – Essays48.tWilliam Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies49.tMiguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote50.tEdmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene51.tFrancis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis52.tWilliam Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays53.tGalileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences54.tJohannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World55.tWilliam Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals56.tThomas Hobbes – Leviathan57.tRené Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy58.tJohn Milton – Works59.tMolière – Comedies60.tBlaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises61.tChristiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light62.tBenedict de Spinoza – Ethics63.tJohn Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education64.tJean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies65.tIsaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics66.tGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology67.tDaniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe68.tJonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal69.tWilliam Congreve – The Way of the World70.tGeorge Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge71.tAlexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man72.tCharles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws73.tVoltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary74.tHenry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones75.tSamuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets

Mortimer J. Adler

If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.

Anne Fadiman

To understand this new frontier, I will have to try to master one of the most difficult and counterintuitive theories ever recorded in the annals of science: quantum physics. Listen to those who have spent their lives immersed in this world and you will have a sense of the challenge we face. After making his groundbreaking discoveries in quantum physics, Werner Heisenberg recalled, "I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?" Einstein declared after one discovery, "If it is correct it signifies the end of science." Schrödinger was so shocked by the implications of what he'd cooked up that he admitted, "I do not like it and I am sorry I had anything to do with it." Nevertheless, quantum physics is now one of the most powerful and well-tested pieces of science on the books. Nothing has come close to pushing it off its pedestal as one of the great scientific achievements of the last century. So there is nothing to do but to dive headfirst into this uncertain world. Feynman has some good advice for me as I embark on my quest: "I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the drain,' into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

Marcus du Sautoy

Ah college years, those were the days. Pure freedom ... leaving home for the first time…the parties…”"What about the tutorials, the lectures, the large building with all the books called the ‘library’?”“Is that what those were?” Gerry blithely replied.

E.A. Bucchianeri

Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.

Suzy Kassem

Books and school are great for learning but there is no substitute for life and living to provide a real education.

Ken Poirot

It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

You are more likely to find three TVs inside a randomly selected house than you are to find a single book that is or was not read to pass an exam, to please God, or to be a better cook.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We awaken by asking the right questions.

Suzy Kassem

The reality of a serious writer is a reality of many voices, some of them belonging to the writer, some of them belonging to the world of readers at large.

Aberjhani

Every article and review and book that I have ever published has constituted an appeal to the person or persons to whom I should have talked before I dared to write it. I never launch any little essay without the hope—and the fear, because the encounter may also be embarrassing—that I shall draw a letter that begins, 'Dear Mr. Hitchens, it seems that you are unaware that…' It is in this sense that authorship is collaborative with 'the reader.' And there's no help for it: you only find out what you ought to have known by pretending to know at least some of it already.It doesn't matter how obscure or arcane or esoteric your place of publication may be: some sweet law ensures that the person who should be scrutinizing your work eventually does do so.

Christopher Hitchens

...stories want to be told. Stories have a power of their own ... you can't write a story until you've felt it. Breathed it in. Walked with your characters. Talked with them.

Angelica Banks

In an age when nations and individuals routinely exchange murder for murder, when the healing grace of authentic spirituality is usurped by the divisive politics of religious organizations, and when broken hearts bleed pain in darkness without the relief of compassion, the voice of an exceptional poet producing exceptional work is not something the world can afford to dismiss.

Aberjhani

When a reader enters the pages of a book of poetry, he or she enters a world where dreams transform the past into knowledge made applicable to the present, and where visions shape the present into extraordinary possibilities for the future.

Aberjhani

... so this is for us.This is for us who sing, write, dance, act, study, run and loveand this is for doing it even if no one will ever knowbecause the beauty is in the act of doing it.Not what it can lead to.This is for the times I lose myself while writing, singing, playingand no one is around and they will never knowbut I will forever rememberand that shines brighter than any praise or fame or glory I will ever have,and this is for you who write or play or read or singby yourself with the light off and door closedwhen the world is asleep and the stars are alignedand maybe no one will ever hear itor read your wordsor know your thoughtsbut it doesn’t make it less glorious.It makes it ethereal. Mysterious.Infinite.For it belongs to you and whatever God or spirit you believe inand only you can decide how much it meantand meansand will forever meanand other people will experience it toothrough you.Through your spirit. Through the way you talk.Through the way you walk and love and laugh and careand I never meant to write this longbut what I want to say is:Don’t try to present your art by making other people read or hear or see or touch it; make them feel it. Wear your art like your heart on your sleeve and keep it alive by making people feel a little better. Feel a little lighter. Create art in order for yourself to become yourselfand let your very existence be your song, your poem, your story.Let your very identity be your book.Let the way people say your name sound like the sweetest melody.So go create. Take photographs in the wood, run alone in the rain and sing your heart out high up on a mountainwhere no one will ever hearand your very existence will be the most hypnotising scar.Make your life be your artand you will never be forgotten.

Charlotte Eriksson

Don't let your past dictate your future,

Chris Mentillo

Secret glances are shared by those on the "inside" or esoteric "inner circle", who have literally gone into many lower frequencies simultaneously. This is the "secret glance" of love, which allows the higher to operate in the lower; to "save" those worlds in order to correct the impending takeover of the "Devil and his demons", a metaphor for light and dark "battles" raging today.

Compton Gage

At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.

Benjamin J. Carey

Before this generation lose the wisdom, one advice - read books.

Amit Kalantri

The moon will guide you through the night with her brightness, but she will always dwell in the darkness, in order to be seen.

Shannon L. Alder

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 world.]

Philip Pullman

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