Quotes Tagged "books"

It is when we are faced with death that we turn most bookish.

Please bury me in the library With a dozen long-stemmed proses

Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.

With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.

When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness.

Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.

Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride as if it were our home, which it is. Why then should we take less pride when reading a book written by some long-dead author? Is it not our book just as much, or even more so, than theirs? So the landowner says, ‘Look at my beautiful home! Isn’t it fine?’ And not, ‘Look at the home so-and-so has built.’ Thus we shouldn’t cry, ‘Look what so-and-so has written. What a genius so-and-so is!’ But rather, ‘Look at what I have read! Am I not a genius? Have I not invented these pages? The walls of this universe, did I not build? The souls of these characters, did I not weave?

In an established love of reading there is a policy of insurance guaranteeing certain happiness till death.

The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books

I told myself that as long as there were books I could be sure of being happy.

And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.

Right now, we're living in an ugly chapter of our lives, but books always get better!

Books are precious things, but more than that, they are the strong backbone of civilization. They are the thread upon which it all hangs, and they can save us when all else is lost.

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there, in prison, that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My home made education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.

A winner is not someone who wins. It's someone who tries and isn't afraid to lose.

Hope without love is hopeless.

A house that has books has hope.

Even when your heart was hurting, there was something so hopeful about reading a book filled with love. The pages were somewhat of a reminder that maybe one day I would be okay again. Maybe one day I would be all right.

The best day includes time for play. Today is the day!