Book Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, he said, was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.

I liked the thought of being a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with care Pearson on the Creed and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted.

C-l-e-a-n, clean, verb active, to make bright, to scour. W-i-n, win, d-e-r, der, winder, a casement. When the boy knows this out of the book, he goes and does it.

Mr Squeers

Charles Dickens

That when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them. (Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)

Arthur Schopenhauer

I am not so naïve as to believe that this slim volume will change the course of history or shake the conscience of the world. Books no longer have the power they once did. Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.

For cruelty to animals, vegetarianism is the great thing to get rid of that. For the planet, to prevent depleting the water and the land and everything, it's a great idea. And I think it's a great thing for your health, and doctors nowadays agree with that. There are plenty of great books and organizations, so no matter where you are, there is someone to help you. That's your first step, and I think your second step is just look in the supermarket for good vegetarian food, and I think it's so much more readily available now.

All our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook.

A critic never made or killed a book or a play. The people themselves are the final judges. It is their opinion that counts. After all, the final test is truth. But the trouble is that most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession and therefore are most economical in its use.

God's not unjust, he doesn't actually exist. We've been deceived. If God existed, he'd have made the world more just... I'll lend you a book and you'll see.

He is a prophet and not a poet and therefore his Koran is to be seen as Divine Law, and not as a book of a human being made for education or entertainment.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.

Thomas Jefferson

I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Why is it that countries which we call strong are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it, why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so hard?

Malala Yousafzai

A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

Ernest Hemingway

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded.

Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon's lair, but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life — and one is as good as the other.

Ernest Hemingway

When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!—when you were off to Tanganyika in '98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?

I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.

Thomas Jefferson

I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.

Jean-Paul Sartre

There is nothing in our book, the Qur'an, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That's a good religion.

A Galeotto [a pander] was the book and writer too: that day we did not read any more.

Dante Alighieri

Lectures were once useful; but now when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary.