Books & Reading Quotes — page 37

Burke's book is a most admirable medication against the French disease, which has made too much progress even in this happy country. I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his chivalry, and I can even forgive his …

The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work.

Joh. Mayor, in the first book of his "History of Scotland," contends much for the wholesomeness of oaten bread; it was objected to him, then living at Paris, that his countrymen fed on oats and base grain…. And yet Wecker out of Galen …

There are periods in the growth of science when it is well to turn our attention from its imposing superstructure and to carefully examine its foundations. The present book is primarily intended as a criticism of the fundamental concepts …

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

A reading-machine, always wound up and going, He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.

The history of the Bible text is a romance of literature, though it is a romance of which the consequences are of vital import; and thanks to the succession of discoveries which have been made of late years, we know more about it than of …

In February 1860 Jeff Davis offered a bill in the Senate wh. passed, making all the territories slave territory. See Davis' book. He was opposed to letting the people decide whether or not they would have slavery – Wm. A. Smith, President …

I am in love with the gopis, ... charmed with Krishna, an enthusiastic admirer of Rama and a devout adorer of Brahma. Yudhisthir, Arjuna, Bhirna and other warriors of the Mahabharata appear greater in my eyes than Agamemnon, Ajax, and …

Almost all men are less humorous than Shakespeare; but most men are more humorous than Milton, and these, it is to be feared, having suffered themselves to be dragooned by the critics into professing a distant admiration for Paradise Lost, …

I don't know of any thing in my book to be criticized on by honorable men.

Besides an answer to '... the Author concealed his real name... a second, by the same hand, in Defense of the first, a Discourse by Mr. Robins, a Treatise of Sir Isaac Newton, with a Commentary by Mr. Colson, and several other Pieces, were …

I am much obliged by the pains you have taken in detecting the blunders of the English Anthology. Some of them, however, are those of the author himself, or of the authority, at least, whence the piece is taken, and for these, of course, …

In his leisure Clayton read, often aloud to his wife, from the store of books he had brought for their new home. Among these were many for little children — picture books, primers, readers — for they had known that their little child would …

Sin can read sin, but dimly scans high grace.

Of all the many and (thanks to a free press) the ever-multiplying blessings attendant upon the "glorious constitution" of literature, not the least precious and profitable to a modern cultivator of systems and syllables, in pamphlets, …

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

To Her, whose children's smiles fed the narrator's fancy and were his rich reward: from the Author.

Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher — a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of …

Love wakes men, once a lifetime each; They lift their heavy lids, and look; And, lo, what one sweet page can teach, They read with joy, then shut the book.

Some young men think they can learn how to be successful in politics from books, and they cram their heads with all sorts of college rot. They couldn’t make a bigger mistake. p. 7

The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people who can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the …