Book Reading Quotes - Page 12

• He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Reading, Deaf And Blind

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2552, Delphi Classics

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• If men were to be destroyed and the books they have written were to be transmitted to a new race of creatures, in a new world, what kind of record would be found in them of so remarkable a phenomenon as the rainbow?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Reading, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (1991). “A Yearning Toward Wildness: Environmental Quotations from the Writings of Henry David Thoreau”, Peachtree Pub Limited

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• The woodchopper reads the wisdom of the ages recorded on the paper that holds his dinner, then lights his pipe with it. When we ask for a scrap of paper for the most trivial use, it may have the confessions of Augustine or the sonnets of Shakespeare, and we not observe it. The student kindles his fire, the editor packs his trunk, the sportsman loads his gun, the traveler wraps his dinner, the Irishman papers his shanty, the schoolboy peppers the plastering, the belle pins up her hair, with the printed thoughts of men.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Reading, Book, Gun

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• The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wise, Book, Reading

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden: Introduction and Annotations by Bill McKibben”, p.102, Beacon Press

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• The Library is a wilderness of books.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Reading, Library

  Henry David Thoreau (1960). “H. D. Thoreau, a Writer's Journal”, p.84, Courier Corporation

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• There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject; as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the first.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Reading, Light

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2068, Delphi Classics

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• We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things - the teacher of all truth.

  Charles Kingsley

  Teacher, Book, Reading

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• A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Book, Reading, Air

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• Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Lying, Book, Reading

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook E 65, 1799.

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• Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Real, Book

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• Books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten; but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction: memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. Written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. Tradition is but a meteor, which, if once it falls, cannot be rekindled.

  Samuel Johnson

  Memories, Book, Fall

  "The Works of Samuel Johnson: Journey to the Hebrides. Tales of the imagination. Prayers and sermons".

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• 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

  Real, Book, Fall

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• The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.

  George Orwell

  Country, Real, Book

  George Orwell (1953). “Shooting an Elephant: And Other Essays”

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• A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Book, Reading, Successful

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• The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

  Hannah More

  Prayer, Book, Reading

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• Everything in this book may be wrong. - The Savior's Manual

  Richard Bach

  Book, Reading, May

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• When the book comes out it may hurt you - but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.

  James A. Baldwin

  Hurt, Book, Reading

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• It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along the shore.

  Margaret Fuller

  Book, Reading, Europe

  Margaret Fuller (1846). “Papers on Literature and Art”

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• A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Book, Reading, Past

  Charles Horton Cooley (2017). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.308, Routledge

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• The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

  Lord Byron

  Reading, Book

  Letter to Richard Hoppner, October 29 1819, in L. A. Marchand (ed.) 'Byron's Letters and Journals' vol. 6 (1978)

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• Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Children, Growing Up, Book

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “The Mulberry Tree”, p.49, Random House

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• The child lives in the book; but just as much the book lives in the child.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Children, Book, Reading

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “The Mulberry Tree”, p.49, Random House

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• Reading ... changes you. You aren't the same person after you've read a particular book as you were before, and you will read the next book, unless both are Harlequin Romances, in a slightly different way.

  Margaret Atwood

  Reading, Book, Romance

  Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

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• Books only spoil the originality of genius. Very well for those who can't think for themselves - But when one has made up one's opinions, there is no use in reading.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Book, Reading, Thinking

  Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1824). “Works”, p.192

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• Writers do not come out of houses without books.

  Doris Lessing

  Book, Reading, House

  "A Hunger for Books" by Doris Lessing, www.theguardian.com. December 08, 2007.

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