Book quotes
21K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside book — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Ideas become powerful only if they appear in the flesh; an idea which does not lead to action by the individual and by groups remains at best a paragraph or a footnote in a book."
"I would rather instill in my amateur students love, than knowledge, of music. Left with only knowledge, they will at the end close their books and consign the course to forgetfulness. But if they have learned to love but the smallest part of the art, they are likely to pursue some phase of it the rest of their lives."
"Jane Austen: Getting into her books is like getting in bed with a cadaver. Something vital is lacking; namely, life."
"I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read."
"An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it."
"Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic."
"There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book."
"For the best return on your money, pour your purse into your head."
"Homicide is the major leagues, the center ring, the show. It always has been ... It goes beyond academic degrees, specialized training or book learning, because all the theory in the world means nothing if you can't read the street."
"I read The Vegetarian and fell in love with it. A year later, I was invited to go and speak at the London Book Fair (which I'd never even heard of before), as they were gearing up for Korea being the market focus country in 2014. I met Max Porter there, Kang's editor at Portobello, sent him my sample, and the rest is history."
"Don't judge me by the cover, 'cause I'm a real good book."
"Readers enjoy talking about books almost as much as they like reading."
"Education is the process of selling someone on books."
"The plot is so tired that even this reviewer, who in infancy was let drop by a nurse with the result that she has ever since been mystified by amateur coin tricks, was able to guess the identity of the murderer from the middle of the book."
"Why, after all, should readers never be harrowed? Surely there is enough happiness in life without having to go to books for it."
"I love writing books - I really do. If I could just quit everything and work on a book every day, I would love that most."
"One could get a first-class education from a shelf of books five feet long."
"The stupid and dishonest accountants allowed the genie of totally inappropriate accounting to descend on derivatives books. And once this has happened - people get status, etc. - it's impossible to get it back into the bottle."
"The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books."
"They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25, and it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film."
