Book Quotes: Literary Pearls of Wisdom

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested"

Francis Bacon, Philosopher

"No two persons ever read the same book"

Edmund Wilson, Critic

"When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language"

John Donne, Poet

"It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book"

Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher

"There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts"

Charles Dickens, Novelist

"Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time"

John Ruskin, Writer

"Beware of the person of one book"

Thomas Aquinas, Theologian

"Years teach us more than books"

Berthold Auerbach, Author

"Some books leave us free and some books make us free"

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher

"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book"

Groucho Marx, Comedian

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them"

Mark Twain, Author

"Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed"

Dwight D. Eisenhower, President

"Never loan a book to someone if you expect to get it back. Loaning books is the same as giving them away"

Doug Coupland, Author

"Read. Read. Read. Just don't read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different styles"

R. L. Stine, Writer

"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page"

Saint Augustine, Saint

"I sort of try to read the books when they come out impartially and not make up my mind, but the fact is when I was reading the sixth, 'Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince', there were bits in there where I was going, 'God, I would love to do that because it's so good'"

Daniel Radcliffe, Actor

"I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories"

Ray Bradbury, Writer

"Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book"

Charles Kingsley, Clergyman

"A book that is shut is but a block"

Thomas Fuller, Clergyman

"The true university of these days is a collection of books"

Thomas Carlyle, Writer

"The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes"

Agatha Christie, Writer

"Americans like fat books and thin women"

Russell Baker, Journalist

"Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things, but to me they're more visual than oral, and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven't the least idea of where poetry is going"

James Laughlin, Poet

"I don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not a bibliophile in that word's natural sense"

Norman MacCaig, Poet

"The impulse to dream was slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing"

Richard Wright, Novelist

"Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads"

George Bernard Shaw, Dramatist

"No agent wants to see a book until he or she has decided whether to pursue the relationship"

Sara Paretsky, Author

"The best source for finding an agent is called Literary Agents of North America. It's a complete list of agents, not only by name and address, but by type of book they represent and by what their submission criteria are"

Sara Paretsky, Author

"Most people don't have the money to spend on advertising to create awareness among readers, nor do they have the contacts at newspapers or magazines to get their books reviewed"

Sara Paretsky, Author

"So many people are working in vaudeville today that I looked for three weeks to book enough acts for an hour bill and didn't have them until the night before we opened in Buffalo and money was no object!"

Edgar Bergen, Actor

"These days, there are many people around the world who listen to the songs that made me infamous and read the books that made me respectable"

Kinky Friedman, Musician

"Dennis the Menace was probably the most realistic comic book ever done. No space aliens ever invaded!"

Gilbert Hernandez, Artist

"God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide"

Rebecca West, Author

"I mean, there are things in the book you could never do in a movie"

Noah Hathaway, Actor

"One of the things I have tried to do with this book and with all of them really is avoid that simple, easy, reductionist view of motivation and to show we do things for a complex net of reasons, a real braid of reasons"

Russell Banks, Author

"And I don't like books which are full of name dropping"

Daphne du Maurier, Novelist

"I always wanted to go to the Chavez school but I could never afford it when I was growing up so a lot of my learning came from magic books and watching other magicians. I was also very lucky that I had a couple of really good magic teachers"

Lance Burton, Entertainer

"Amongst Women concentrated on the family, and the new book concentrates on a small community. The dominant units in Irish society are the family and the locality. The idea was that the whole world would grow out from that small space"

John McGahern, Writer

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

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