Book Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

Barbara W. Tuchman

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

William Ellery Channing

Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own.

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

Alain de Botton

Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.

Gaston Bachelard

Are these the choice dishes the Doctor has sent us?
Is this the great poet whose works so content us?
This Goldsmith's fine feast, who has written fine books?
Heaven sends us good meat, but the Devil sends cooks.

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!

Let none turn over books, or roam the stars in quest of God, who sees him not in man.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

Alfred North Whitehead

He [Pliny the Elder] used to say that "no book was so bad but some good might be got out of it."

Pliny the Younger

From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot in front of the other. But when books are opened you discover you have wings.

Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.

Wisława Szymborska

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

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.

Be kind and considerate with your criticism. … It's just as hard to write a bad book as a good book.

A novel is like a gland pill - it nips off the cream of my hysterics and gets them running on track in a book where they belong instead of rioting all over my person.

I profess both to learn and to teach anatomy, not from books but from dissections; not from positions of philosophers but from the fabric of nature.

Dreams are…illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.

There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough.