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Quotations by Subject

Quotations by Subject: Books
(Related Subjects: Writing, Poetry)
Showing quotations 1 to 30 of 69 quotations in our collections

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.: Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.: Alfred Hitchcock (1899 - 1980)
The covers of this book are too far apart.: Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary
You can cover a great deal of country in books.: Andrew Lang (1844 - 1912)
There's a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word "banal" sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say "underedited," I say "derivative." The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.: Anna Quindlen (1953 - )
Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.: Arnold Lobel
Wear the old coat and buy the new book.: Austin Phelps
Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.: Bell Hooks, O Magazine, December 2003
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.: Charles Caleb Colton (1780 - 1832), Lacon, 1820
I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage.: Charles De Secondat (1689 - 1755)
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.: Charles W. Eliot (1834 - 1926), The Happy Life, 1896
There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.: Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957)
A room without books is like a body without a soul.: Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), (Attributed)
It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead.: Dame Rose Macaulay (1881 - 1958)
Books...are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.: Dorothy L. Sayers (1893 - 1957), The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, 1928
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.: Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967)
Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book...: Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.: Edith Sitwell (1887 - 1964)
Most new books are forgotten within a year, especially by those who borrow them.: Evan Esar (1899 - 1995)
Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.: Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)
I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.: Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993)
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.: G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.: G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
Woe be to him that reads but one book.: George Herbert (1593 - 1633)
From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.: Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.: Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.: Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.: Harold Bloom (1930 - ), O Magazine, April 2003
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.: Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), Walden: Reading, 1854
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.: Henry James (1843 - 1916)

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