BOOK QUOTES VII

quotations about books

One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.

GEORGE W. BUSH

"W's Greatest Hits: The top 25 Bushisms of all time", Slate, January 12, 2009


What makes the success of many books consists in the affinity there is between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

CHAMFORT

The Cynic's Breviary


There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

CHARLES DICKENS

Oliver Twist


Don't judge a book by its cover.

ENGLISH PROVERB


Books are but pictures--the world is their original; to know the former well, we must necessarily have much acquaintance with the colors and shades of the latter.

NORMAN MACDONALD

Maxims and Moral Reflections


All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.

AMY LOWELL

Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds


The best books are those which lift us to a higher plane where we breathe a purer atmosphere.

ORISON SWETT MARDEN

Architects of Fate


No two persons ever read the same book, or saw the same picture.

MADAME SWETCHINE

"Airelles,", The Writings of Madame Swetchine


An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only.

C. S. LEWIS

"On Stories", Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories


The covers of this book are too far apart.

AMBROSE BIERCE

The Devil's Dictionary


I want to do something splendid ... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead ... I think I shall write books.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

Little Women


You know, not every good book needs to be a movie, or a television series, or a video game. There's great work in those mediums, of course, but sometimes a book should remain a book. I still believe nothing tells a story with the richness and complexity of a good novel. When people say they think a book would make a good movie, they say this sometimes because, if it worked, they already saw all the images in the movie theatre that is in their brains. And sometimes that is the way it should stay.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

"Carlos Ruiz Zafon's love letter to literature", New Zealand Listener, Mar. 14, 2013


Books are not seldom talismans and spells.

WILLIAM COWPER

The Task


There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main ... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.

WALT DISNEY

attributed, Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time


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

WILLIAM STYRON

attributed, Writers at Work


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 ZAFON

The Shadow of the Wind


Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

W. H. AUDEN

"Reading", The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays


It is only a novel ... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.

JANE AUSTEN

Northanger Abbey


Books are the training weights of the mind.

EPICTETUS

The Art of Living


McDonald’s has announced that for the next month in the United Kingdom, Happy Meals will come with a book instead of a toy. And they will be renamed "Disappointment Meals."

JIMMY KIMMEL

Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Jan. 12, 2012