Book quotes
21K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside book — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"It took me the bulk of my twenties to write one book about a family of alligator wrestlers. Whereas somebody like Steve Martin is releasing his latest banjo symphony, having just completed another movie and acclaimed, best-selling novel."
"I wish life was not so short. Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about."
"Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We're in one, of course; but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out loud of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: 'Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring' and they'll say 'Oh yes, that's one of my favorite stories."
"Most of my library consists of books on the Catholic faith: conversion stories, books on saints and Early Church Fathers, Apparitions of Mary, prayer books, Scriptural resource books on Apologetics, Typology, concordances, bible dictionaries, bible encyclopedias and at least 40 bibles - both Catholic and Protestant editions in several different translations."
"We still have to evolve, that's how we're created, we're created to evolve so you can believe in that the answer is in this book or in this one idea that the masses most believe in, each individual must evolve themselves, spiritually and consciously."
"All one needs to do is read - books, magazines, research the Internet - and pay attention to the influencers in their lives to discover the myriad people of strong moral character who have and still are making positive, meaningful contributions and differences in our world."
"I had hundreds of books under my skin already. Not selected reading, all of it. Some of it could be called trashy. I had been through Nick Carter, Horatio Alger, Bertha M. Clay and the whole slew of dime novelists in addition to some really constructive reading. I do not regret the trash. It has harmed me in no way. It was a help, because acquiring the reading habit early is the important thing. Taste and natural development will take care of the rest later on."
"Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations."
"Read books are far less valuable than unread ones."
"A book has to be easy to open and you don't have to be a bodybuilder to lift it. I like books I can read in bed. Those big tombstones would kill me."
"Because I stopped dieting already six months ago, and I think it's important to bring out a book like this and you are there a year later and say look, I'm still like this."
"I'm writing this book because we're all going to die."
"The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."
"My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's."
"Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . ."
"A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written."
"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."
"Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common sense."
"It is a little remarkable, that - though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends - an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public."
"The first book we fall in love with shapes us every bit as much as the first person we fall in love with."
