I enjoy quotes, I think you know that. Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit, something I am sometimes lacking. One of my favorite pastimes is reading. And so, putting two loves together like peanut butter M&M's, here are some great quotes on reading.
"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."
-C.S. Lewis
"The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones."
-Joseph Joubert
"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
-Cicero
"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
-Oscar Wilde
"A house without books is like a room without windows."
-Horace Mann
"My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."
-Malcolm X
"Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them."
-Lemony Snickett
"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."
-Joseph Addison
"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
-Mark Twain
"I have always imagined that Paradise will be some kind of library."
-Jorge Luis Borges
A book is a gift you can open again and again."
-Garrison Keillor
"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."
-Oscar Wilde
"Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
-G.K. Chesterton
"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
-Toni Morrison
"Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book."
-Stéphane Mallarmé
"It is not true that "we have only one life to live"; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish."
-S.I. Hiyakawa
"Books may well be the only true magic."
-Alice Hoffman
"When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before."
-Clifton Fadiman
"After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world."
-Philip Pullman
"Reading brings us unknown friends."
-Honoré de Balzac
"My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read."
-Abraham Lincoln
"We read to know that we are not alone."
-C.S. Lewis
6 comments:
You should read Borges. Everything is some kind of library to him.
Chesterton is another guy you should read.
They've both been on my to-read list for awhile now. Anything particular you recommend?
And I strongly suggest you read "Snow Crash." Best book by far I've read in years.
Snow Crash sounds awesome. Hiro Protagonist? That's where that comes from?
Read any short story collection by Borges, but in particular the stories "The Library of Babel", "Funes The Memorious" and "The Circular Ruins".
For Chesterton, read The Man Who Was Thursday or the Father Brown stories.
Right now I'm reading "How Not To Write A Novel" and if we were still doing book club/writer's group I would strongly recommend it for that.
OK, I admit it. I just read The Hunger Games. Better than I thought.
The new quote I like is from Woodrow Wilson:
"I not only use all the brains I have, but all that I can borrow" (not particularly about books or reading, but I like it).
Who is the author of Snow Crash?
Neal Stephenson. It was recommended to me by your eldest son.
Like most things he recommends to me, I took too long taking him up on the recommendation and loved it.
You lie, Austin...
You are NEVER lacking wit!
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