Books & Reading Quotes — page 6

the respect and attraction I feel for a mind that ventures to read direct in God's own book

That is all I have to say to you, sir. We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers. (Book II, Ch. 3)

The average editor cannot escape feeling that telling a writer to do something is almost the same thing as performing it himself.

I shall never be content till I have superseded Hume, and I believe I shall supersede him—not because I am so good a writer, but because, being an adequate writer, I have a larger and grander conception than he had of the organic life of a …

Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.

Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, …

There were three great Virginia poets in the very beginning — George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson. "What!" you say. "We do not even know the names of their publishers. They were not poets!" Well, how do you know? Did you …

Many of the narratives can only tend to excite ideas the worst calculated for a female breast: Every thing is called plainly and roundly by its name; and the annals of a Brothel would scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecent …

And rather than make the book unwieldy I have eschewed notes—reluctantly when some obscure passage or allusion seemed to ask for a timely word; with more equanimity when the temptation was to criticize or 'appreciate.' For the function of …

Reading is a wrestling with ideas greater than any we can create for ourselves. It has been said, a little extravagantly, that reading can get the better of most physical sufferings, all indeed save the pangs of hunger.

It's queer they'd be allowin' the sick ones to read books when I'll bet it's the same lazy readin' in the house bought the half of them down with the consumption itself.

The modern school with its many books, but without systematic lectures, turns out many graduates who are lacking in retentiveness and no sooner than the sound of the words has left their teachers' lips, the subject been forgotten; and if …

The literature of former days is like watching a fire from across the water; in present-day literature, the author himself is being scorched by the fire and he is bound to feel it deeply, and when he begins to feel it deeply, he is bound …

The writer feels that management is also destined to become more of an art, and that many of the, elements which are now believed to be outside the field of exact knowledge will soon be standardized tabulated, accepted, and used, as are …

It is the part which contains all that is worth reading.

What do you think of J. M. Keynes's book? ... The condemnation of the work of the Conference as a whole is none too severe. I remember few cases in history where negotiators might have done so much good, and have done so much evil.

The more a writer deviates from simplicity, the less sincere he appears.

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness — Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

It has been said that Homer was the Bible of the Greeks. The remark exactly misses the truth. The Greeks fortunately had no Bible, and this fact was both an expression and an important condition of their freedom. Homer's poems were …

People have got that ancient prejudice so firmly rooted in their heads — that one mustn't write save at I the dictation of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, writing is a business.

Unfavorable as were these conditions in the latter part of 1761, just before the birth of American freedom, arose our first contribution to literature. So strange were the conditions under which this race flower throve, we were not …

The great standard of literature as to purity and exactness of style is the Bible.

A new theory by the author

The invention of an author is a species of property unknown to the common law of England. Its usages are immemorial; and the views of it tend to the benefit and advantage of the public with respect to the necessaries of life, and not to …