Books & Reading Quotes — page 36

The supposition that the world is ever in league to put a man down is childish. Hardly less childish is it for an author to lay the blame on reviewers. A good sturdy author is a match for a hundred reviewers.

The Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book.

You will next read the new testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus.

Time, which is the author of authors.

Revelation, n. A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing.

Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding places in a voluminous writer.

If this “sacred” book teaches man to enslave his brother, it is not inspired. A god who would establish slavery is as cruel and heartless as any devil could be.

It is always understood as an expression of condemnation when anything in Literature or Art is said to be done for effect; and yet to produce an effect is the aim and end of both.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth, as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink, and wear.

They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.

That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time.

When I am not walking, I am reading;

Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!

This book is for ALL: for every man, woman, and child.

There are two kinds of taste in the appreciation of imaginative literature: the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.

The modern that Mr. Parker invented and patented in 1791 and 1796 was so dear, and the conditions of setting were so slow, that its introduction into buildings was much retarded. This cement, in the beginning, was called Parker's cement; …

No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.

Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses: we read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

I'm a writer first & a woman after.

A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading. Too much over-charges nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. 'Tis thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and gives health …

Knowledge of the Bible never comes by intuition. It can only be got by hard, regular, daily, attentive, wakeful reading.