Quotation About Books III

We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits,
-- so much help
By so much reading. it is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth --
'T is then we get the right good from a book.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning


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.
~ Henry David Thoreau



The Brahmins say that in their books there are many
predictions of times in which it will rain.
But press those books as strongly as you can,
you can not get out of them a drop of water.
So you can not get out of all the books that contain
the best precepts the smallest good deed.
~ Count Leo Tolstoy


The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.
Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it,
whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects
of his inner self that are opened by the text,
that road cut through the interior jungle forever
closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement
of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming,
whereas the copier submits it to command.
~ Walter Benjamin


A conventional good read is usually a bad read,
a relaxing bath in what we know already.
A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we,
the readers, become conspirators.
~ Malcolm Bradbury


Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted;
nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested:
that is, some books are to be read only in parts,
others to be read, but not curiously, and some few
to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
~ Francis Bacon


Surviving and thriving as a professional today demands
two new approaches to the written word.
First, it requires a new approach to orchestrating information,
by skillfully choosing what to read and what to ignore.
Second, it requires a new approach to integrating information, by
reading faster and with greater comprehension.
~ Jimmy Calano


Readers may be divided into four classes:
1.) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in
nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.
2.) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get
through a book for the sake of getting through the time.
3.) Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
4.) Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by
what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge


There are books so alive that you're always afraid that
while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed,
has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too,
and like a river moved on and moved away.
No one has stepped twice into the same river.
But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?
~ Marina Tsvetaeva


What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while...
What really knocks me out is a book that,
when you're all done reading it,
you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours
and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.
That doesn't happen much, though.
~ J. D. Salinger


To use books rightly, is to go to them for help;
to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail;
to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own,
and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges
and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.
~ John Ruskin


The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work
to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum
of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they
go to this edge and risk falling over it --when they endanger
the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.
~ Salman Rushdie

Quotation About Books II

A good book is the purest essence of a human soul. ~ Thomas Carlyle





Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room
piled high with cases in my father's name;
Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out
among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse
between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats
of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first.
And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark.
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning



A book is good company.
It is full of conversation without loquacity.
It comes to your longing with full instruction,
but pursues you never.
~ Henry Ward Beecher


That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed in profit. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott


She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain. ~ Louisa May Alcott



When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story.
And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own. ~ John Berger


There is no past, so long as book shall live! ~Edward Bulwer-Lytton



There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. ~ Joseph Brodsky


Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear. ~ E.S. Barrett


Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends. ~ Dawn Adams


I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book. ~ Coolio


I often feel sorry for people who don't read good books; they are missing a chance to lead an extra life. ~ Scott Corbett


The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them. ~ Samuel Butler


In books lies the soul of the whole past time. ~ Thomas Carlyle


All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been -- it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. ~ Thomas Carlyle


The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity. ~ Thomas Carlyle


Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please. ~ Oswald Chambers


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. ~ Thomas Carlyle


Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules,
without words or anger, without bread or money.
If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them,
they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold;
if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.
~ Richard De Bury


He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend,
a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter.
By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently
divert and pleasantly entertain himself,
as in all weathers, as in all fortunes. ~ Barrow