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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"The way my books are structured, everyone was together, then they all went their separate ways and the story deltas out like that, and now it’s getting to the point where the story is beginning to delta back in, and the viewpoint characters are occasionally meeting up with each other now and being in the same point at the same time, which gives me a lot more flexibility for killing people."
"I conceive a knowledge of books is the basis upon which other knowledge is to be built."
"Melancholy is a sensual pleasure that is deliberately provoked. How many people shut themselves away to make themselves sadder, or to weep beside a stream, or choose a sentimental book! We are constantly building and unbuilding ourselves."
"I spent a long time in art school so I can really draw. I'll doodle and suddenly I'll find the beginning of the movie in one picture. Usually, I start my stuff on the telephone. Right by the telephone I've got a book of doodles. When I'm on the phone, I'll be doing a drawing eventually."
"The Book of the science of Mechanics must precede the Book of useful inventions."
"The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting."
"A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum."
"I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul."
"I know what I should love to do - to build a study; to write, and to think of nothing else. I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made, and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it. Not a bookworm, being which is to give off no utterances; but a man in the world of writing - one with a pen that shall stop men to listen to it, whether they wish to or not."
"'What is the use of a book', thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?'"
"I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method."
"Now, everyone is excited about food - cooking, growing, learning - watching it on TV, buying books, trying things at home. It's the greatest time ever to be in food - which is why it's so hard to see so many people still relying on processed food. I am hoping that we had a generational blip - and that these young people will continue on and pass on their love of food and creativity to the next generation of kids."
"I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic ... something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."
"People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases."
"Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything."
"A fondness for reading, which, properly directed, must be an education in itself."
"I am sure," cried Catherine, "I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should not I call it so?" "Very true," said Henry, "and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement—people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word."
"There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No-it is Robinson Crusoe."
"I hate books; they only teach people to talk about what they don't understand."
"Knowledge is honestly everything. It's not just books and staying behind a desk and having a diploma. There's also traveling and knowledge about people, and what I do and scripts and books."
