Law dies; books never. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
Medicine for the soul. [ Inscription over the door of the Library at Thebes ]
Not many but good books. [ Bayard Taylor ]
Books are embalmed minds. [ Bovee ]
The medicine of the mind. [ Diodorus ]
Books which are no books. [ Charles Lamb ]
Books wind into the heart. [ Hazlitt ]
Books have their destinies. [ Horace ]
Years know more than books. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Good books are true friends. [ Bacon ]
Books are a languid pleasure. [ Montaigne ]
A true book is an inspiration. [ Alexander H. Everett ]
Years teach us more than books. [ Berthold Auerbach ]
A book is the only immortality. [ Rufus Choate ]
Word by word big books are made. [ French Proverb ]
The monument of vanished mindes. [ Sir Wm. Davenant ]
Books are sepulchres of thought. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Books, the children of the brain. [ Swift ]
Books are nourishment to the mind. [ Italian Proverb ]
A blessing on the printer's art! -
Books are the mentors of the heart. [ Mrs. Hale ]
The burning soul, the burdened mind.
In books alone companions find. [ Mrs. Hale ]
My library was dukedom large enough. [ William Shakespeare ]
In books, or work, or healthful play. [ Isaac Watts ]
Whence is thy learning? hath thy toil
O'er books consumed the midnight oil? [ Gay ]
The virtue of books is to be readable. [ Emerson ]
Go, litel boke! go litel myn tregedie! [ Chaucer ]
A book is a friend that never deceives. [ Pixerecourt ]
Beware you be not swallowed up in books. [ John Wesley ]
A multitude of books distracts the mind. [ Seneca ]
Come, and take choice of all my library,
And so beguile thy sorrow. [ William Shakespeare ]
Books think for me.
I can read anything which I call a book. [ Lamb ]
O let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast. [ Browning ]
'Tis in books the chief
Of all perfections to be plain and brief. [ Butler ]
All books grow homilies by time; they are
Temples, at once, and Landmarks. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Books cannot always please, however good.
Minds are not ever craving for their food. [ Crabbe ]
Thou art a plant sprung up to wither never
But like a laurel, to grow green forever. [ Herrick ]
Read well-written books aloud to children. [ Ada Ellen Bayly, a.k.a. Edna Lyall, English novelist and early feminist, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
Books make the past our heritage and home. [ Edward Bulwer Lytton ]
As great a store
Have we of books as bees of herbs or more. [ Henry Vaughan ]
Books are not seldom talismans and spells. [ Cowper ]
Begin by reading thyself rather than books. [ Rumi ]
The books are balanced in heaven, not here. [ H. W. Shaw ]
There is nothing so imperishable as a book. [ James Hain Friswell ]
I cannot sit and think; books think for me. [ Lamb ]
Romances are not in books, they are in life.
Silent companions of the lonely hour,
Friends, who can alter or forsake,
Who for inconstant roving have no power,
And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take. [ Mrs. Norton ]
How science dwindles, and how volumes swell! [ Young ]
Deep versed in books and shallow in himself. [ Milton ]
Many books,
Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
Uncertain and unsettled still remains -
Deep versed in books, and shallow in himself. [ Milton ]
When a new book comes out, I read an old one. [ Rogers ]
There is no past, so long as books shall live. [ Edward Bulwer Lytton ]
A small number of choice books are sufficient. [ Voltaire ]
Some books are only cursorily to be tasted of. [ Fuller ]
That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story. [ William Shakespeare ]
A book should be luminous, but not voluminous. [ Bovee ]
These hoards of wealth you can unlock at will. [ Wordsworth ]
Books make up no small part of human happiness. [ Frederick the Great ]
Leaving us heirs to amplest heritages
Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages,
And giving tongues unto the silent dead! [ Longfellow ]
Stillness accompanied with sound so soft,
Charms more than silence. Meditation here
May think down hours to moments. Here the heart
May give an useful lesson to the head,
And learning wiser grow without his books. [ Cowper ]
Manners with fortunes, humors turn with climes,
Tenets with books and principles with times. [ Pope ]
Some said, John, print it, others said. Not so;
Some said, it might do good, others said, No. [ Bunyan ]
Books should to one of these four ends conduce,
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use. [ Sir John Denham ]
A good book may be as great a thing as a battle. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]
Come, my best friends, my books! and lead me on. [ Cowley ]
Next, over his books his eyes began to roll,
In pleasing memory of all he stole.
How here he sipped, how there he plundered snug,
And sucked all over, like an industrious bug. [ Pope ]
The pleasant books, that silently among
Our household treasures take familiar places,
And are to us as if a living tongue
Spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces! [ Longfellow ]
Read Homer once, and you can read no more,
For all books else appear so mean, so poor.
Verse will seem prose, but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need. [ John Sheffield ]
'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print;
A book's a book, although there's nothing in it. [ Byron ]
Books are the immortal sons deifying their sires. [ Plato ]
That place that does contain
My books, the best companions, is to me
A glorious court, where hourly I converse
With the old sages and philosophers;
And sometimes, for variety, I confer
With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels;
Calling their victories, if unjustly got,
Unto a strict account, and, in my fancy,
Deface their ill-placed statues. [ Beaumont and Fletcher ]
Books follow manners; manners do not follow books. [ T. Gautier ]
Pray thee, take care, that tak'st my book in hand,
To read it well; that is to understand. [ Ben Jonson ]
Every man is a volume if you know bow to read him. [ Channing ]
Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books. [ Bacon ]
People will not be better than the books they read. [ Bishop Potter ]
The worth of a book is a matter of expressed juices. [ Bovee ]
Books - lighthouses erected in the great sea of time. [ Whipple ]
A man will turn over half a library to make one book. [ Samuel Johnson ]
Books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good;
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow. [ Wordsworth ]
Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books;
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks. [ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet ]
They are the heritage that glorious minds
Bequeath unto the world! — a glittering store
Of gems, more precious far than those he finds
Who searches miser's hidden treasures over.
They are the light, the guiding star of youth.
Leading his spirit to the realms of thought,
Pointing the way to Virtue, Knowledge, Truth,
And teaching lessons, with deep wisdom fraught.
They cast strange beauty round our earthly dreams,
And mystic brightness over our daily lot;
They lead the soul afar to fairy scenes,
Where the world's under visions enter not;
They're deathless and immortal — ages pass away,
Yet still they speak, instruct, inspire, amidst decay! [ Emeline S. Smith ]
Experience converts us to ourselves when books fail us. [ A. B. Alcott ]
Books are the ever-burning lamps of accumulated wisdom. [ George William Curtis ]
A first book has some of the sweetness of a first love. [ Willmott ]
They lard their lean books with the fat of other's works. [ Burton ]
The Wise (Minstrel or Sage), out of their books are clay;
But in their books, as from their graves they rise.
Angels - that, side by side, upon our way,
Walk with and warn us! [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Those who have even studied good books may still be fools. [ Hitopadesa ]
The true university of these days is a collection of books. [ Carlyle ]
We are as liable to be corrupted by books as by companions. [ Fielding ]
Wise books for half the truths they hold are honored tombs. [ George Eliot ]
Great books, like large skulls, have often the least brains. [ W. B. Clulow ]
A book which hath been culled from the flowers of all books. [ George Eliot ]
Books afford the surest relief in the most melancholy moments. [ Zimmermann ]
Books have brought some men to knowledge, and some to madness. [ Petrarch ]
Of the book of books most wondrous is the tender book of love. [ Goethe ]
Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep. [ Paxton Hood ]
Books are the best things, well used; abused, among the worst. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Every great book is an action, and every great action is a book. [ Martin Luther ]
A good book is the best of friends - the same today and forever. [ Tupper ]
A book like a grape-vine should have good fruit among its leaves. [ E. P. Day ]
Even books have their lifetime, of which no one can deprive them. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise. [ Emerson ]
It is not with the living that we should live, but with the dead. [ Chamfort ]
In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight. [ Emerson ]
We should be careful what books we put into the hands of children. [ C. Buck ]
Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof. [ Channing ]
Men love better books which please them than those which instruct. [ Dubois ]
No book can be so good, as to be profitable when negligently read. [ Seneca ]
Little books have their fates according to the taste of the reader. [ Maurus ]
With wisdom fraught; not such as books, but such as practice taught. [ Waller ]
A taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life. [ Gibbon ]
Learning hath gained most by those books by which printers have lost. [ Fuller ]
I entrench myself in my books, equally against sorrow and the weather. [ Leigh Hunt ]
The books which help you most, are those which make you think the most. [ Theodore Parker ]
Let us digest them; otherwise they enter our memory, but not our minds. [ Seneca ]
Books,
says my Lord Bacon, should have no patrons but truth and reason.
[ Colton ]
Books are the beehives of thought; laconics, the honey taken from them.
There is no book so worthless, that I cannot collect something from it. [ Scaliger ]
He is a great necromancer, for he asks counsel of the dead (i.e. books). [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
You will find that most books worth reading once are worth reading twice. [ John Morley ]
All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books. [ Voltaire ]
The writings of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander. [ Landor ]
Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books. [ Colton ]
For books are as meats and viands are; some of good, some of evil substance. [ Milton ]
That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with profit. [ Alcott ]
The great objection to new books is, that they prevent our reading old ones. [ Joseph Joubert ]
In proportion as society refines, new books must ever become more necessary. [ Goldsmith ]
No chair is so much wanted (in our colleges) as that of a professor of books. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, old books to read. [ Alonzo of Arragon ]
Books of entertainment first led Adam Clarke to believe in a spiritual world. [ G. W. Curtis ]
It is nearly an axiom that people will not be better than the books they read. [ Dr. Potter ]
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read. [ Emerson ]
Books bear him up awhile, and make him try to swim with bladders of philosophy. [ Rochester ]
There was a time when the world acted upon books; now books act upon the world. [ Joubert ]
Those faithful mirrors, which reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes. [ Gibbon ]
There is no book so bad,
said the bachelor, but something good may be found in it.
[ Cervantes ]
Without grace no book can live, and with it the poorest may have its life prolonged. [ Horace Walpole ]
Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. [ Emerson ]
It is a sure evidence of a good book if it pleases us more and more as we grow older. [ Lichtenberg ]
Observation more than books, experience rather than persons, are the prime educators. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]
The pleasant books, that silently among our household treasures take familiar places. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
The love of books is a love which requires neither justification, apology, nor defence. [ Langford ]
There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man. [ Johnson ]
The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought and of elevated opinions. [ George Dawson ]
A book! oh, rare one! be not, as in this fangled world, a garment nobler than it covers. [ William Shakespeare ]
Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book. [ Samuel Smiles ]
I love everything that's old, - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine. [ Goldsmith ]
It is always easy to shut a book, but not quite so easy to get rid of a lettered coxcomb. [ Colton ]
The last thing that we discover in writing a book is to know what to put at the beginning. [ Pascal ]
Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular-letter to the friends of him who writes it. [ R. L. Stevenson ]
Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]
Books are men of higher stature, and the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear. [ Mrs. Browning ]
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. [ Lord Bacon ]
The hearts of men are their books, events are their tutors, great actions are their eloquence. [ Macaulay ]
Journalism is an immense power, that threatens soon to supersede sermons, lectures, and books. [ Theodore Tilton ]
We should accustom the mind to keep the best company by introducing it only to the best books. [ Sydney Smith ]
The quantity of books in a library is often a cloud of witnesses of the ignorance of the owner. [ Oxenstiern ]
How many books there are whose reputation is made that would not obtain it were it now to make! [ Joubert ]
Half the gossip of society would perish if the books that are truly worth reading were but read. [ George Dawson ]
A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years' study of books. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Books, while they teach us to respect the interest of others, often make us unmindful of our own. [ Goldsmith ]
Books are a sort of dumb teachers; they cannot answer sudden questions, or explain present doubts. [ J. Watts ]
Worthy books are not companions, they are solitudes; we lose ourselves in them, and all our cares. [ S. Bailey ]
It is thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and gives health and vigor to the mind. [ T. Fuller ]
Though men can cover crimes with bold, stern looks, poor women's faces are their own faults' books. [ William Shakespeare ]
Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all. [ Johnsoniana ]
If time is precious. no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all. [ Carlyle ]
Old books, as you well know, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow. [ O. W. Holmes ]
Strong as man and tender as woman, they welcome you in every mood, and never turn from you in distress. [ J. A. Langford ]
Some books are drenched sands, on which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps, like a wrecked argosy. [ Adam Smith ]
He found shelter among books, which insult not, and studies that ask no questions of a youth's finances. [ Lamb ]
As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book or a friend. [ George MacDonald ]
Many books owe their success to the good memories of their authors and the bad memories of their readers. [ Colton ]
Jess would have been an omnivorous reader of books had it not been her conviction that reading was idling. [ George Eliot ]
A woman who writes, commits two sins: she increases the number of books, and decreases the number of women. [ Alphonse Karr ]
In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. [ Channing ]
A taste for books is the pleasure and glory of my life; I would not exchange it for the riches of the Indies. [ E. Gibbon ]
He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be; and he that studies men will know how things are. [ Colton ]
The pains we take in books or arts which treat of things remote from the necessaries of life is a busy idleness. [ Fuller ]
It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part; the rest are confounded with the multitude. [ Voltaire ]
Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed. [ Sir W. Temple ]
All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been, - it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. [ Carlyle ]
If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not. [ Colton ]
Why aren't more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books aren't within everybody's reach. [ S. T. Coleridge ]
In every man's memory, with the hours when life culminated are usually associated certain books which met his views. [ Emerson ]
Books are loved by some merely as elegant combinations of thought; by others as a means of exercising the intellect. [ Lord Dudley ]
We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read rather than to read them. Such an art is practicable. [ Disraeli ]
No matter what his rank or position may be, the lover of books is the richest and the happiest of the children of men. [ Langford ]
He who loves not books before he comes to thirty years of age will hardly love them enough afterward to understand them. [ Earl of Clarendon ]
The study of books is a languishing and feeble motion that hearts not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises at once. [ Montaigne ]
If a book come from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and authorcraft are of small amount to that. [ Carlyle ]
It is not how many books thou hast, but how good; careful reading profiteth, while that which is full of variety delighteth. [ Seneca ]
A good book is fruitful of other books; it perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers. [ Alcott ]
I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me. [ Charles Lamb ]
The images of men's wits and knowledge remain in books, exempted from the worry of time and capable of perpetual renovation. [ Bacon ]
The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading while we are young. I have had as much of this pleasure perhaps as any one. [ Hazlitt ]
In comparing men and books, one must always remember this important distinction, that one can put the books down at any time. [ N. P. Willis ]
Novels may teach us as wholesome a moral as the pulpit. There are sermons in stones,
in healthy books, and good in everything.
[ Colton ]
God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. [ Channing ]
He who loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, or an effectual comforter. [ Barrow ]
Employ your time in improving yourselves by other men's documents: so shall you come easily by what others have labored hard for. [ Socrates ]
We call some books immortal! Do they live? If so, believe me, Time hath made them pure. In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Proverbs were anterior to books, and formed the wisdom of the vulgar, and in the earliest ages were the unwritten laws of morality. [ Disraeli ]
Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us in solitude, and keep us from being a burden to ourselves. [ J. Collier ]
He that studies only men will get the body of knowledge without the soul; and he that studies only books, the soul without the body. [ Colton ]
A thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept their pale, unbodied shade, to warn us from fleshless hps. [ Bulwer ]
It is better to be the builder of our own name than to be indebted by descent for the proudest gifts known to the books of heraldry. [ Hosea Ballou ]
I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pestered the world ever convince me to the contrary. [ Sterne ]
Books are true friends that will never flatter nor dissemble: be you but true to yourself, . . . and you shall need no other comfort. [ Bacon ]
That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it. [ Macaulay ]
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a simple reason, - they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. [ Colton ]
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Of the things which man can make or do here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy, are the things that we call books. [ Carlyle ]
Some books we should keep in our hands, and on our hearts; the best way we could dispose of others would be, to throw them in the fire. [ Acton ]
A book may be compared to the life of your neighbor; if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early. [ Brooke ]
We should have a glorious conflagration if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire. [ Colton ]
No man writes a book without meaning something, though he may not have the faculty of writing consequentially and expressing his meaning. [ Addison ]
At the age of sixty, to marry a beautiful girl of sixteen, is to imitate those ignorant people who buy books to be read by their friends. [ A. Ricard ]
The reason why borrowed books are so seldom returned to their owners is, that it is much easier to retain the books than what is in them. [ Montaigne ]
I like books. I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling when I get in their presence, that a stable-boy has among horses. [ O. W. Holmes ]
Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art. [ Thoreau ]
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds; and these invaluable communications are within the reach of all. [ Mme. de Genlis ]
The scholar only knows how dear these silent yet eloquent companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. [ Washington Irving ]
If the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all. [ Fenelon ]
Books are the windows through which the soul looks out; a house without books is like a room without windows. It is a man's duty to have books. [ H. W. Beecher ]
Books are negative pictures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the fine lines are produced. [ O. W. Holmes ]
The most accomplished way of using books at present is to serve them as some do lords, learn their titles, and then boast of their acquaintance. [ Swift ]
Gentlemen use books as gentlewomen handle their flowers, who in the morning stick them in their heads, and at night strawe them at their heeles. [ Lyly ]
Books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction. [ Jonson ]
It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and which, having so taught us, enable us to recall them with satisfaction when old. [ Leigh Hunt ]
Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age. [ Burke ]
Given the books of a man, it is not difficult. I think, to detect therein the personality of the man, and the station in life to which he was born. [ Stoddard ]
A few books, well studied, and thoroughly digested, nourish the understanding more than hundreds but gargled in the mouth, as ordinary students use. [ F. Osborn ]
Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep, for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter. [ Paxton Hood ]
It is books that teaches us to refine our pleasures when young, and which, having so taught us, enables us to recall them with satisfaction when old. [ L. Hunt ]
Books produce the same effect on the mind that diet does on the body; they may either impart no salutary nutriment, or convey that which is pernicious. [ Mrs. Sigourney ]
Books give the same turn to our thoughts that company does to our conversation, without loading our memories, or making us even sensible of the change. [ Swift ]
Without books, God is silent, justice dormant, natural science at a stand, philosophy lame, letters dumb, and all things involved in Cimmerian darkness. [ Bartholin ]
Books are the negative pictures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. [ Holmes ]
Most books fail, not so much from a want of ability in their authors, as from an absence in their productions of a thorough development of their ability. [ Bovee ]
Good books are to the young mind what the wanning sun and the refreshing rain of spring are to the seeds which have lain dormant in the frosts of winter. [ H. Mann ]
Properly speaking, we learn from those books only that we cannot judge. The author of a book that I am competent to criticise would have to learn from me. [ Goethe ]
The book that will make its way in the world, that will remain, or survive, as an imperishable monument, or memorial, must have the stamp of genius upon it. [ Martial ]
Our favorites are few: since only what rises from the heart reaches it, being caught and carried on the tongues of men wheresoever love and letters journey. [ Alcott ]
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. [ Milton ]
I have somewhere seen it observed that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower: she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it. [ Colton ]
Oh, but books are such safe company! They keep your secrets well; they never boast that they made your eyes glisten, or your cheek flush, or your heart throb. [ Mrs. S. P. Parton ]
Books are necessary to correct the vices of the polite; but those vices are ever changing, and the antidote should be changed accordingly - should still be new. [ Goldsmith ]
The past but lives in words; a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale, unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
No man reads a book of science from pure inclination. The books that we do read with pleasure are light compositions, which contain a quick succession of events. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Those who are conversant with books well know how often they mislead us when we have not a living monitor at hand to assist us in comparing practice with theory. [ Junius ]
Great libraries of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats - that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners! [ Isaac Disraeli ]
Do not believe that a book is good, if in reading it thou dost not feel more contented with thy existence, if it does not rouse up in thee most generous feelings. [ Lavater ]
There is this value in books, that they enable us to converse with the dead. There is something in this beyond the mere intrinsic worth of what they have left us. [ Brydges ]
Books are the legacies that genius leaves to mankind, to be delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those that are yet unborn. [ Addison ]
Plays and romances sell as well as books of devotion, but with this difference, - more people read the former than buy them, and more buy the latter than read them. [ T. Hughes ]
Many a man lives a burden upon the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose for a life beyond life. [ Milton ]
Literature consists of all the books--and they are not many--where moral truth and human passion are touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form. [ John Morley ]
Here, in the country, my books are my sole occupation: books my sure solace, and refuge from frivolous cares. Books the calmers, as well as the instruction of the mind. [ Mrs. Inchbald ]
A face that had a story to tell. How different are faces in this particular! Some of them speak not; they are books in which not a line is written, save perhaps a date. [ Longfellow ]
Men love better books which please them than those which instruct. Since their ennui troubles them more than their ignorance, they prefer being amused to being informed. [ L'Abbe Dubois ]
In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. [ Carlyle ]
When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek for no other rule to judge the work by; it is good, and made by a good workman. [ Bruyere ]
To buy books only because they were published by an eminent printer, is much as if a man should buy clothes that did not fit him, only because made by some famous tailor. [ Pope ]
Books, to judicious compilers, are useful, - to particular arts and professions absolutely necessary, - to men of real science they are tools; but more are tools to them. [ Johnson ]
There is a kind of physiognomy in the titles of books no less than in the faces of men, by which a skilful observer will as well know what to expect from the one as the other. [ Butler ]
The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it. [ Emerson ]
He has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world, and the glories of a modern one. [ Longfellow ]
Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof, and obtain access for himself and family to some social library. Almost any luxury should be sacrificed to this. [ William Ellery Channing ]
Books are the true metempsychosis, - they are the symbol and presage of immortality. The dead men are scattered, and none shall find them. Behold they are here! they do but sleep. [ Beecher ]
I should as soon think of swimming across the Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue. [ Emerson ]
To divert at any time a troublesome fancy, run to thy books; they presently fix thee to them, and drive the other out of thy thoughts. They always receive thee with the same kindness. [ Fuller ]
There is no man who has not some interesting associations with particular scenes, or airs, or books, and who does not feel their beauty or sublimity enhanced to him by such connections. [ Sir A. Alison ]
When self-interest inclines a man to print, he should consider that the purchaser expects a pennyworth for his penny, and has reason to asperse his honesty if he finds himself deceived. [ Shenstone ]
Thou mayst as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading. It is thought and digestion which make books serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind. [ Thomas Fuller ]
Obey thy parents, keep thy word justly; swear not; commit not with man's sworn spouse; set not thy sweet heart on proud array. Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy pen from lenders' books. [ William Shakespeare ]
In looking around me seeking for miserable resources against the heaviness of time, I open a book, and I say to myself, as the cat to the fox: I have only one good turn, but I need no other. [ Madame Necker ]
Nothing can supply the place of books. They are cheering or soothing companions in solitude, illness, affliction. The wealth of both continents would not compensate for the good they impart. [ Channing ]
A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing. If you read it when you are recovering from an illness, and return to it years after, it is changed surely, with the change in yourself. [ Andrew Lang ]
Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation! [ Pascal ]
Out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books, and the like, we do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time. [ Bacon ]
In the poorest cottage are Books: is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is Deepest in him. [ Carlyle ]
Mankind are creatures of books, as well as of other circumstances; and such they eternally remain, - proofs, that the race is a noble and believing race, and capable of whatever books can stimulate. [ Leigh Hunt ]
It is with books as with women, where a certain plainness of manner and of dress is more engaging than that glare of paint and airs and apparel which may dazzle the eye, but reaches not the affections. [ Hume ]
Have you known how to compose your manners? You have done a great deal more than he who has composed books. Have you known how to take repose? You have done more than he who has taken cities and empires. [ Montaigne ]
He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts. [ William Shakespeare ]
No possession can surpass, or even equal, a good library to the lover of books. Here are treasured up for his daily use and delectation, riches which increase by being consumed, and pleasures which never cloy. [ John Alfred Langford ]
If I were a writer of books, I would compile a register, with the comment of the various deaths of men; and it could not but be useful, for who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live. [ Montaigne ]
The first thing naturally when one enters a scholar's study or library, is to look at his books. One gets the notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance around his book-shelves. [ O. W. Holmes ]
I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me. I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. [ Lamb ]
If the secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader. [ Thackeray ]
I armed her against the censures of the world; showed her that books were sweet unreproaching companions to the miserable, and that if they could not bring us to enjoy life, they would at least teach us to endure it. [ Goldsmith ]
He that will have no books but those that are scarce evinces about as correct a taste in literature as he would do in friendship who would have no friends but those whom all the rest of the world have sent to Coventry. [ Colton ]
Have you known how to compose your manners, you have achieved a great deal more than he who has composed books. Have you known how to attain repose, you have achieved more than he who has taken cities and subdued empires. [ Montaigne ]
I seek in the reading of my books only to please myself by an irreproachable diversion; or if I study it is for no other science than that which treats of the knowledge of myself, and instructs me how to die and live well. [ Montaigne ]
Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings, - as some savage tribes determine the power of their muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Some read books only with a view to find fault, while others read only, to be taught; the former are like venomous spiders, extracting a poisonous quality, where the latter, like the bees, sip out a sweet and profitable juice. [ L'Estrange ]
There are persons who flatter themselves that the size of their works will make them immortal. They pile up reluctant quarto upon solid folio, as if their labors, because they are gigantic, could contend with truth and heaven! [ Junius ]
After the pleasure of possessing books there is hardly anything more pleasant than that of speaking of them, and of communicating to the public the innocent richness of thought which we have acquired by the culture of letters. [ Nodier ]
Some new books it is necessary to read, - part for the information they contain, and others in order to acquaint one's self with the state of literature in the age in which one lives: but I would rather read too few than too many. [ Lord Dudley ]
I read hard, or not at all; never skimming, never turning aside to merely inviting books; and Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Sterne, Jonathan Edwards, have passed like the iron atoms of the blood into my mental constitution. [ F. W. Robertson ]
I believe that everyone, sometime or other, dreams that he is reading papers, books, or letters; in which case the invention prompts so readily that the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own suggestions for the composition of another. [ Addison ]
The Bible contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence than can be collected from all other books, in whatever age or language they have been written. [ Sir William Jones ]
It is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or good, but the well-reading of a few, could he be sure to have the best. And it is not possible to read over many on the same subject without a great deal of loss of precious time. [ Richard Baxter ]
Without attempting a formal definition of the word, I am inclined to consider rhetoric, when reduced to a system in books, as a body of rules derived from experience and observation, extending to all communications by language, and designed to make it efficient. [ W. E. Channing ]
Some will read only old books, as if there were no valuable truths to be discovered in modern publications: others will only read new books, as if some valuable truths are not among the old. Some will not read a book because they know the author: others would also read the man. [ Disraeli ]
Books are delightful when prosperity happily smiles; when adversity threatens, they are inseparable comforters. They give strength to human compacts, nor are grave opinions brought forward without books. Arts and sciences, the benefits of which no mind can calculate, depend upon books. [ Richard Aungervyle ]
The silent power of books is a great power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them which those alone can know who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they may yet set in action countless multitudes, and change the order of nations. [ Henry Giles ]
Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. [ William Shakespeare ]
The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life. [ R. L, Stevenson ]
From numberless books the fluttering reader, idle and inconstant, bears away the bloom that only clings to the outer leaf; but genius has its nectaries, delicate glands, and secrecies of sweetness, and upon these the thoughtful mind must settle in its labor, before the choice perfume of fancy and wisdom is drawn forth. [ Willmott ]
Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admire, - they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly. [ Thackeray ]
The invention of printing added a new element of power to the race. From that hour, in a most especial sense, the brain and not the arm, the thinker and not the soldier, books and not kings, were to rule the world; and weapons, forged in the mind, keen-edged and brighter than the sunbeam, were to supplant the sword and the battle-axe. [ Whipple ]
Knowledge of books is like that sort of lantern which hides him who carries it, and serves only to pass through secret and gloomy paths of his own; but in the possession of a man of business, it is as a torch in the hand of one who is willing and able to show those who are bewildered, the way which leads to their prosperity and welfare. [ Steele ]
This, therefore, is a law not found in books, but written on the fleshly tablets of the heart, which we have not learned from man, received or read, but which we have caught up from Nature herself, sucked in and imbibed; the knowledge of which we were not taught, but for which we were made; we received it not by education, but by intuition. [ Cicero ]
A wise man will select his books, for he would not wish to class them all under the sacred name of friends. Some can be accepted only as acquaintances. The best books of all kinds are taken to the heart, and cherished as his most precious possessions. Others to be chatted with for a time, to spend a few pleasant hours with, and laid aside, but not forgotten. [ Langford ]
The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They repeat, they re-arrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, but with a singular change - that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, nonce, struck out. [ Robert Louis Stevenson ]
When I consider what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal life to those whose hours are cold and hard, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, bring down truth from heaven; I give eternal blessings for this gift, and thank God for books. [ James Freeman Clarke ]
There is a world of science necessary in choosing books. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter useful, and the human mind requires both. The cannon law and the codes of Justinian shall have due honor, and reign at the universities; but Homer and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the rose. [ Balzac ]
I cannot look around me without being struck with the analogy observable in the works of God. I find the Bible written in the style of His other books of Creation and Providence. The pen seems in the same hand. I see it, indeed, write at times my steriously in each of these books: thus I know that mystery in the works of God is only another name for my ignorance. The moment, therefore, that I become humble, all becomes right. [ Richard Cecil ]
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. Of what use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature? [ Emerson ]
The importance of the romantic element does not rest upon conjecture. Pleasing testimonies abound. Hannah More traced her earliest impressions of virtue to works of fiction; and Adam Clarke gives a list of tales that won his boyish admiration. Books of entertainment led him to believe in a spiritual world; and he felt sure of having been a coward, but for romances. He declared that he had learned more of his duty to God, his neighbor and himself from Robinson Crusoe than from all the books, except the Bible, that were known to his youth. [ Willmott ]
He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery. [ Hazlitt ]
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their soul into ours. God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers; they give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. [ W. E. Channing ]