| Books Quotes |
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Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time. Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age. There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all. Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts -- the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine -- but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously. Some books leave us free and some books make us free. The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy; The books that people talk about we never can recall; And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all. Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last. In every fat book there is a thin book trying to get out. When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it. A book that furnishes no quotations is no book -- it is a plaything. All the world knows me in my book, and may book in me. Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before. I think the adjective post-modernist really means mannerist. Books about books is fun but frivolous. There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world. The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame. If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid. For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day. Learning why one great book is just like every other great book is the key to understanding literature 'This pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in it. Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads. Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing. The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read. The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it. The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb. The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most. I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them. I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred. Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters -- because girls can read as well as boys -- reading this book? Is it a book that you would have lying around in your own house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read? Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads. I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable -- any real insight or broad human sentiment. The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that. After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books. Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever. I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child. A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one. For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives. Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents. Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever. Maxims and aphorisms, let us remember that wisdom is the true salt of literature, and the books that are most nourishing are richly stored with it, and that is the main object to seek in reading books. I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs. The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of eternity; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book -- what everyone else does not say in a book. There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, Did you get an erection? If the answer is Yes from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic. Books that have become classics -- books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal -- always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay. Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired. Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books. A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books. As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. Few are sufficiently sensible of the importance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order of books. Why, except for some special reason, read an inferior book, at the very time you might be reading one of the highest order? It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty. Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders. Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital. Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution --such call I good books. How can I die? I'm booked. Books and harlots have their quarrels in public. There is no friend as loyal as a book History books that contain no lies are extremely dull. |
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