"Books always speak of other books."
Read quote
11 likes
Book quotes
Book
21K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Book
Browse quotes that often appear alongside book — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Book quotes (page 56 of 1049)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay."
Read quote
11 likes
"Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treausre of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors."
Read quote
11 likes
"If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book."
Read quote
11 likes
"And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness."
Read quote
11 likes
"The world is a great book, of which they that never stir from home read only a page."
Read quote
11 likes
"People say that this new generation is so used to the Internet that their heads are already different. They can't read a book from beginning to end. That is not a tragedy. The book changes form."
Read quote
11 likes
"Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings."
Read quote
11 likes
"I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. And I thought that if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as that in a concentration camp, my book might gain a hearing. I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair."
Read quote
11 likes
"Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning."
Read quote
11 likes
"For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately."
Read quote
11 likes
"Usually I read several books at a time - old books, new books, fiction, nonfiction, verse, anything - and when the bedside heap of a dozen volumes or so has dwindled to two or three, which generally happens by the end of one week, I accumulate another pile."
Read quote
11 likes
"Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution."
Read quote
11 likes
"A small number of choice books are sufficient."
Read quote
11 likes
"We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next."
Read quote
11 likes
"There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book."
Read quote
11 likes
"May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books."
Read quote
11 likes
"In the world of letters, learning and knowledge are one, and books are the source of both; whereas in science, as in life, learning and knowledge are distinct, and the study of things, and not of books, is the source of the latter."
Read quote
11 likes
"Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe."
Read quote
11 likes
"Always carry a book on a date so that when you get bored you can slip into the Ladies for a read."
Read quote
11 likes