Book Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

René Descartes

Elie Wiesel

Nicolaus Copernicus

Raymond Chandler

Samuel Johnson

Diana, Princess of Wales

Ezra Pound

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

I do things differently, because I don't go by a rule book, because I lead from the heart, not the head, and albeit that's got me into trouble in my work, I understand that.

Diana, Princess of Wales

I can easily conceive, most Holy Father, that as soon as some people learn that in this book which I have written concerning the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, I ascribe certain motions to the Earth, they will cry out at once that I and my theory should be rejected.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

René Descartes

If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.

Raymond Chandler

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.

Vladimir Nabokov

I don't care for philosophers in books. They are always bores. A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

The crime of book purging is that it involves a rejection of the word. For the word is never absolute truth, but only man's frail and human effort to approach the truth. To reject the word is to reject the human search.

Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals. It can only be ensured by instinct, sharpened by thought practicing the stroke so often that at the crisis it is as natural as a reflex.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

The habit of breaking up one's colour to make it brilliant dates from further back than Impressionism—Couture advocates it in a little book called 'Causeries d'Atelier' written about 1860—it is part of the technique of Impressionism but used for quite a different reason.

John Singer Sargent

When I wrote my book I wanted to love someone. I wanted to be in love. Now I know that I shall never be in love - and I no longer wish to be.

From the Desert I come to thee
On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind
In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,
And the midnight hears my cry:
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!

Liberals were intimidated by the Reagan administration and did not want to appear naive by talking about programs that called for government support. I just said, 'The hell with that. I'm out there. I'm exposed with this book.'

William Julius Wilson

I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me.

Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

Real understanding of a thing comes from taking it apart oneself, not reading about it in a book or hearing about it in a classroom. To this day I always insist on working out a problem from the beginning without reading up on it first, a habit that sometimes gets me into trouble but just as often helps me see things my predecessors have missed.

Robert B. Laughlin

I make money using my brains and lose money listening to my heart. But in the long run my books balance pretty well.

Research to me is as important, or more important, than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built.

No furniture so charming as books, even if you never open them or read a single word.