Books quotes

Holmes Oliver Wendell Jr. 1841-1935

The advice of the elders to young men is very apt  to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.

Howells William Dean 1837-1920

Does it afflict you to find your books wearing out? I mean  literally ... the mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to
me, but that of books most of all.

Huxley Aldous 1894-1963

Chrome Yellow

The proper study of mankind is books.

Lamb Charles 1775-1834

Essays of Elia „The Two Races of Men"

Your borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.

Lamb Charles 1775-1834

Last Essays of Elia „Detached Thoughts"

Books think for me.

Larkin Philip 1922-1985

„Study of Reading Habits"

Don't read too much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store,
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.

Lowell Amy 1874-1925

„Sword Blades and Poppy Seed"

All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you drug, with words.

MacDonald Ross 1888-1964

The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.

Milton John 1608-1674

Areopagitica

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life  in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are.

Milton John 1608-1674

Paradise Regained

Who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgement equal or superior
(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself.

Montesquieu Charles Baron de 1689-1755

Pensées diverses „Portrait de Montesquieu"

I suffer from the disease of writing books and being  ashamed of them when they are finished.

Moore Thomas 1779-1852

„The time I've lost in wooing"

My only books
Where woman's looks,
And folly's all they've taught me.

Pound Ezra 1885-1972

„Villanelle; the psychological hour"

I had over-prepared the event,
that much was ominous.
With middle-ageing care
I had laid out just the right books.
I had almost turned down the pages.

Powell Anthony 1905-

Books do furnish a room.

Roosevelt Franklin D. 1882-1945

Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory.

Rousseau Jean-Jacgues 1712-1778

I hate books; they teach us only to talk about what we do not know.

Ruskin John 1819-1900

Sesame and Lilies

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of  the hour, and the books of all time.

Ruskin John 1819-1900

Sesame and Lilies

We call ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough to thumb each other's books out of circulating libraries!

Smith Sydney 1771-1845

No furniture so charming as books.

Twain Mark 1835-1910

The man who does not read good books has no  advantage over the man who can't read them.

Wesley John 1703-1791

Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

Wilde Oscar 1854-1900

The Picture of Dorian Gray

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written.

Woolf Virginia 1882-1941

Have you any notion how many books are written  about women in the course of one year?
Have you any notion how many are written by men?
Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed  animal in the universe?

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