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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"I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man."
"When my father passed, I was still an unsuccessful cook with a drug problem. I was in my mid-thirties, standing behind an oyster bar, cracking clams for a living when he died. So, he never saw me complete a book or achieve anything of note. I would have liked to have shared this with him."
"If there's a gun on the wall in act one, scene one, you must fire the gun by act three, scene two. If you fire a gun in act three, scene two, you must see the gun on the wall in act one, scene one."
"When I'm on purpose - when I'm allowing Source to come through - it's always there. At those times, I'm not focused on any ego sense about how much I'm going to make, how well a book is going to do, whether people are going to buy it, or any of that. I just go to a state of awe and gratitude - I'm deeply, profoundly grateful - and it just works. The first words out of my mouth every morning are "I thank you.""
"Look for knowledge not in books but in things themselves."
"I'll note you in my book of memory."
"Your face is a book, where men may read strange matters."
"O heaven! that one might read the book of fate, and see the revolution of the times."
"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?"
"Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind."
"I wanted to be a great white hunter, a prospector for gold, or a slave trader. But then, when I was eight, my parents sent me to a boarding school in South Africa. It was the equivalent of a British public school with cold showers, beatings and rotten food. But what it also had was a library full of books."
"To read a paper book is another experience: you can do it on a ship, on the branch of a tree, on your bed, even if there is a blackout."
"A book is a fragile creature. It suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands."
"Every book purchase made from Amazon is a vote for a culture without content and without contentment."
"I have told the story I was asked to tell. I have closed it, as so many stories close, with a joining of two people. What is one man's and one woman's love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the great revolutions of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species? A little thing. But a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens. If you lose the key, the door may never be unlocked. It is in our bodies that we lose or begin our freedom, in our bodies that we accept or end our slavery. So I wrote this book for my friend, with whom I have lived and will die free."
"We read many books, because we cannot know enough people."
"When we read a book, our most essential trait - imagination - is given the opportunity to soar."
"The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. (City of God, Book 19)"
"It's difficult to explain love. You want to explain water? You need a book for it. There are many different ways to explain what water is. Love is big, it's very big. I know that I have tons of it. But maybe we don't want to open up so much, and we think, maybe we don't have so much, but yes, you know that you have tons of love. We all do. Through that love we can connect, we can heal each other, we can make people, all of us, happy, joyful, and make a better world."
"Every morning, after a few sips of coffee and a bit of small talk, each of us retreats with our books, and travels centuries away from this place."
