Books & Reading Quotes

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

An experienced doctor by name Deway has written an excellent book on Fasting, in which he has shown the benefits of dispensing with the breakfast. I can also say from my experience that there is absolutely no need to eat more than twice, …

That book is good in vain, which the reader throws away.

Suzanne could not read a word, but the last atom of flavour was conserved in every dish that she sent to table; and what is literature compared with cooking? One is shadow and the other is substance.

Ah! what you don't know would make a great book.

The enormous multiplication of books in every branch of knowledge is one of the greatest evils of this age; since it presents one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct information, by throwing in the reader's way …

“Silence,” it has been said by one writer, “is a virtue which renders us agreeable to our fellow-creatures.”

Yet with every allowance, one feels it difficult to see how any mortal ever could consider this Koran as a Book written in Heaven, too good for the Earth; as a well-written book, or indeed as a book at all; and not a bewildered rhapsody; …

I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under …

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.

A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.

Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversation than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood.

I see that the Rev. Dr. Eddy advises ministers not to answer the arguments of infidels in the pulpit, and gives this wonderful reason: That the hearers will get more doubts from the answer than from reading the original arguments. So the …

The art of a great writer is seen in the perfect fitness of his expressions. He knows how to blend vividness with vagueness, knows where images are needed, and where by their vivacity they would be obstacles to the rapid appreciation of …

What a born melancholiac I am! The only way I keep afloat is by working. Directly I stop working I feel that I am sinking down, down. And as usual, I feel that if I sink further I shall reach the truth. That is the only mitigation; a kind …

But Coraggio – and think of A.D. 2850. Where will your Carlyles and Emersons be then? But Herodotus will still be read with delight. We must do our best to be read too.

In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

A presentation copy...is a copy of a book whoch does not sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother author, he expects from you a …

A gentleman reading a poem that began withWhere is that man that never yet did hear Of fair Penelope, Ulysses' queen?[Jonson] calling his cook, asked if he had ever heard of her, who answering "No," demonstrate to him Lo, there the man …

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while.

Here she drew forth a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil and, after meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege to look over her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the brief query: [...].

Italy and Spain at this epoch had no text-books of their own; all were translations from the French and English works.

Einstein's manner was full of charm and bonhomie. He enjoyed a joke and had many a jibe at the Nazi Professors, one hundred of whom in a book had condemned his theory. "Were I wrong," he said, "one professor would have been quite enough." …