Books & Reading Quotes — page 2

The grandeur of the dooms We have imagined for the mighty dead; All lovely tales that we have heard or read: An endless fountain of immortal drink, Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws.

I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.

Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.

By reading a man does, as it were, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with past ages.

The end to which good men's libraries finally come is a melancholy subject. Few things are so much loved by some, and despised and neglected by others, as books, and specially theological books.

It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefoot friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first …

The pencil moved prophetic: together now men read In the fair book of nature, and find the hope they need. The wreath woven by the river is by the seaside worn, And one of fate's best arrows to its due mark is borne.

Our conscience, which is a great ledger book, wherein are written all our offenses...grinds our souls with the remembrance of some precedent sins, makes us reflect upon, accuse and condemn ourselves.

It took nearly two hundred years to convince the whole theological world that cosmical problems were the legitimate problems of science and science alone, for in 1819 the books of Galilei, Copernicus, and Keppler were still upon the index …

Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable.

If I have not read a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticised for us!

The aim of the scholarly editor is not to produce the the easiest text for the reader, but to get as near as he can to the text of the author.

Tell Mr. Gordon to load himself up on States' Rights before I come. Did he ever read John Baldwin's testimony before the Reconstruction Committee in wch., in answer to a question, Baldwin said that he & all Confederates had committed …

I propose to lay before you a concise history of Indian chronology extracted from Sanskrit books, attached to no system, and as much disposed to reject Mosaick history, if it be proved erroneous, as to believe it, if it be confirmed by …

A reporter remembers what he understands, and sets down what his readers will appreciate. The genius of Boswell appears not least in this, that that he was willing, on occasion, to record Johnson's most whimsical and irresponsible remarks. …

Sorrow, it is said, will make even an oyster feel poetical. I never tried my hand at that sort of writing but on this particular occasion such was my state of feeling, that I began to fancy myself inspired; so I took pen in hand, and as …

The method of demonstration, which was invented by the author of fluxions, is accurate and elegant; but we propose to begin with one that is somewhat different; which, being less removed from that of the antients, may make the transition …

It suits your purpose, no doubt, to delude the unwary by false colors; as the devil, when he commences innkeeper, hangs out an angel for his sign. The real meaning, however, is that you '--set down ALL in malice.' Shakspears morality, in …

I had been trying to find a publisher who would put some of my stuff into book form, but I met with no encouragement. Every well-known publisher in the United States turned down Tarzan of the Apes, including A.C. McClurg & Co., who finally …

From what has been last said it follows, that the titles of the Canonical books, and their ascription to definite authors, either do not come under their inspiration, or need not be accepted literally.

the "lightning of the mind." We feel an instantaneous kindness and reverence towards an author

One of his sentences, written two months after his last interview with Mrs. Sinico, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there …