Books Quotes

Bloodthirsty little beasts. Never trust a duck.- William Herondale

Cassandra Clare

A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones.

Abraham Lincoln

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.

Mark Twain

Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac.

Oscar Wilde

Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.

Oscar Wilde

I don't believe in children's books. I think after you've read Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and Huckleberry Finn, you're ready for anything.

Sir John Mortimer, Books and Boo

Child! Do not throw this book about;Refrain from the unholy pleasureOf cutting all the pictures out!Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.

Hilaire Belloc, dedication to Th

A classic is a book which people praise and don't read.

Mark Twain

Every article and review and book that I have ever published has constituted an appeal to the person or persons to whom I should have talked before I dared to write it. I never launch any little essay without the hope and the fear, because the encounter may also be embarrassing that I shall draw a letter that begins, 'Dear Mr. Hitchens, it seems that you are unaware that' It is in this sense that authorship is collaborative with 'the reader.' And there's no help for it: you only find out what you ought to have known by pretending to know at least some of it already.It doesn't matter how obscure or arcane or esoteric your place of publication may be: some sweet law ensures that the person who should be scrutinizing your work eventually does do so.

Christopher Hitchens

When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.

Philip Roth

How can you tell? That I like books, I mean.The look on your face when you walked in, somehow I doubted you were that impressed by me.

Cassandra Clare

Nobody ever talks about the pyramids that weren't built, the books that weren't written, the songs that weren't sung. Stop letting your fear condemn you to mediocrity. Get out of your own way. Your dreams are a poetic reflection of your soul's wishes. Be courageous enough to follow them. There is no greater time than now to experience the full power of your potential. Make this the day you take the first step in the beautiful journey of bringing your dreams to life.

Steve Maraboli

Professors of literature, who for the most part are genteel but mediocre men, can make but a poor defense of their profession, and the professors of science, who are frequently men of great intelligence but of limited interests and education

Yvor Winters

... for words have the power to change us.

Cassandra Clare

The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read.

Benjamin Franklin

Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.

Abraham Lincoln

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

Henry David Thoreau

Cemeteries are full of unfulfilled dreams... countless echoes of 'could have' and 'should have' countless books unwritten countless songs unsung... I want to live my life in such a way that when my body is laid to rest, it will be a well needed rest from a life well lived, a song well sung, a book well written, opportunities well explored, and a love well expressed.

Steve Maraboli

Books smell and feel better. They have that wonderful thingness of turning the pages.

Neil Gaiman

if a book isn't self-explanatory, then it isn't worth reading.

Paulo Coelho