book

A good book isthe precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purposeto a life beyond life.

—Milton,John

Asgood almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a Comus, A Mask man kills a reasonable creature,God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.

—Milton,John

C'est un me¤  tier que de faire un livre, comme de faire une pendule; il faut plus que de l'esprit pour e"  tre auteur. It is as much a trade to write a book as it is to make a watch; it takes more than wit to make an author.

—La Bruye'  re,Jean de

A bad book isasmuchof a labour towriteas a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

—Huxley, Aldous Leonard

Whereas my birth and spirit rather took The way that takes the town; Thou didst betray me to a lingering book, And wrap me in a gown.

—Herbert, George

En re¤  alite¤  , chaque lecteur est, quand il lit, le propre lecteur de soi-me"  me. L'ouvrage de l'e¤  crivain n'est qu'une espe'  ce d'instrument optique qu'il offre au lecteur afin de lui permettre de discerner ce que, sans ce livre, il n'e u" t peut-e"  tre pas vu en soi-me"  me. In reality, each reader reads only what is already within himself. The book is onlya kind of optical instrument which the writer offers to the reader to enable him to discover in himself what he could not have found but for the aid of the book.

—Proust, Marcel

When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

—Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph

There they are, my fifty men and women Naming me the fifty poems finished! Take them, Love, the book and me together. Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

—Browning, Robert

To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.

—Plum

This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit inthe face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny,Time, Love, Beauty†what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off-key perhaps, but I will sing.

—Miller, Henry Valentine

A book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, of human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of nature's works to me expunged and razed, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

—Milton,John

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And thesea gave up the dead whichwere in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And deathand hell were cast intothelake of fire.

—Bible (NewTestament)

I pulled to the side of the street and got out my book of road maps.But to find where you are going, you must know where you are, and I didn't.

—Steinbeck,John Ernest

The news of the dayas it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears, and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy. For the newspaper isinall literalnessthebibleofdemocracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct.

—Lippmann,Walter

What really knocksme out isa book that, whenyou'reall done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

—Salinger,J(erome) D(avid)

To burn a book is not to destroy it.One minute of darkness will not make us blind.

—Rushdie, (Ahmed) Salman

Soon I was alone and began cursing the bloody bible because there were no titles in itöalthough I found the source of practically every good title you ever heard of. But the boys, principally Kipling, had been there before me and swiped all the good ones so I called the book Men Without Women hoping it would have a large sale among the fairies and old Vassar Girls.

—Hemingway, Ernest Millar

What though his head be empty, provided his commonplace book be full.

—Swift,Jonathan

   The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer, (Like the cover of an old book, Its contents worn out, And stripped of its lettering and gilding) Lies here, food for worms! Yet the work itself shall not be lost, For it will, as he believed, appear once more In a new And more beautiful edition, Corrected and amended By its Author!

—Franklin, Benjamin

   Another damned, thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr Gibbon?

—Gloucester,William Henry, 1st Duke of

The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.

—Mailer, Norman Kingsley

A dirty book worth reading.

—Pound, Ezra Loomis

Child! do not throw this book about; Refrain from the unholy pleasure Of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.

—Belloc, (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre

Omnis mundi creatura Quasi liber et pictura Nobis est, et speculum. Each creature of the world Is as a book, a picture, And a mirror to us.

—Alan of Lille also known as  'Alanus de Insulis'

Styleandstructurearetheessence ofa book; great ideas are hogwash.

—Nabokov,Vladimir

I've come to thinkof Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.

—DeLillo, Don

I think if you had ever written a book you were absolutely pleased with, you'd never write another. The same probably goes for having children.

—Weldon, Fay originally Franklin Birkinshaw

Every book is like a purge; at the end of it one is empty†likea dryshell onthebeach, waiting for thetide to come in again.

—du Maurier, Dame Daphne

[The translator] will find one English book and one only, where, as in the Iliad itself, perfect plainness of speech is allied with perfect nobleness; and that book isthe Bible.

—Arnold, Matthew

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot it.

—Capote,Truman

The cure for this ill is not to sit still, Or frowst with a book by the fire; But to take a large hoe and a shovel also, And dig till you gently perspire.

—Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard

Go little book, thy self present, As child whose parent is unkent: To him that is the president Of noblesse and of chivalry, And if that Envy bark at thee, As sure it will, for succour flee.

—Spenser, Edmund

Hehadaddedtohisstoriesa littlestoryofmeditationsand inthesehesaidthat The Enormous Roomwasthegreatest book he had ever read. It was then that Gertrude Stein said,Hemingway, remarks are not literature.

—Stein, Gertrude

He is like a book in breeches.

—Smith, Rev Sydney

The ideal companion in bed is a good book.

—Davies, Robertson

  Need I go on? I hate to bite Hands that led me to the limelight In the Penguin book, I regret The awkwardness. But British, no, the name's not right. Yours truly, Seamus.

—Heaney, SeamusJustin

   I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

—Bible (Old Testament)

I have a little black book with two players in it, and if Iget a chanceto dothem Iwill.Iwill makethemsuffer before I pack this game in. If I can kick them four years over the touch-line, I will.

—Charlton,Jack (John)

Itook thelittlebookout of theangel'shand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.

—Bible (NewTestament)

The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read.

—Ce¤  zanne, Paul

   The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

—Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson

The world is a great volume, and man the index of that book.

—Donne,John

Que mon livre t'enseigne a'   t'inte¤  resser plus a'   toi qu'a'   lui- me"  meöpuis a'   tout le reste plus qu'a'   toi. Maymy book teachyoutobe moreinterestedinyourself than in itöthen, in everyone else more than yourself.

—Gide, Andre¤   Paul Guillaume

   Sempre que os homens sabidos lhe diziam palavras dif|¤ceis, ele sa|¤a logrado. Sobressaltava-se escutando-as. Evidentemente so¤   serviam para encobrir ladroeiras. Mas eram bonitas. Whenever men with book learning used big words in dealing with him, he came out the loser. It startled him just to hear those words.Obviously they were just a cover for robbery. But they sounded nice.

—Ramos, Graciliano

She unbent her mind afterwardsöover a book.

—Lamb, Charles

Behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book.

—Bible (Old Testament)

When you meet Mr. Smith first you think he looks like an over-dressed pirate. Then you begin to think him a character.You wonder at his enormous bulk. Then the utter hopelessness of knowing what Smith is thinking by merely looking at his features gets on your mind and makes the Mona Lisa seem an open book and the ordinary human countenance as superficial as a puddle in the sunlight.

—Leacock, Stephen Butler

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

—Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills

I should never call myself a book lover, any more than a people lover: it all depends what's inside them.

—Larkin, Philip Arthur

In a sense, one can never read the book that the author originally wrote, and one can never read the same book twice.

—Wilson, Edmund

   Cui dono lepidum novum libellum arida modo pumice expolitum? Corneli, tibi. Who shall I give my nice new little book to, my little book polished with dry pumice? To you, Cornelius.

—Catiline full name Lucius Sergius Catilina

Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.

—Fuller, R(ichard) Buckminster

   Rule1, on page1of the book of war is: 'Do not march on Moscow'†[Rule 2] is: 'Donot gofighting withyour land armies in China.'

—MontgomeryofAlamein, BernardLaw, 1stViscount

There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.

—McCullers, (Lula) Carson ne¤  e Smith

'That's not a regular rule: you invented it just now.' 'It's the oldest rule in the book,'said the King. 'Then it ought to be Number One,'said Alice.

—Dodgson

Detach the writer from the milieu where he has experienced his greatest sense of belonging, and you have created a discontinuity within his personality, a short circuit in his identity. The result is his originality, his creativity comes to an end. He becomes the one-book novelist or the one-trilogy writer.

—Roth, Henry

Remember that cookery writers are no different from other writers: many have only one book in them (and some shouldn't have let it out in the first place).

—Barnes,Julian Patrick

The only trouble with this book is that its covers are too close together.

—Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher Charles Herbert

Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.

—Woolf, (Adeline) Virginia ne¤  e Stephen

The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.

—Wilson

The moment you praise a book too highly you waken a resistance in your listener.

—Miller, Henry Valentine

   It seems he had no design except to appear respectable, and herehekeepsa privatebook toprovethat hewasnot.

—Stevenson, Robert Louis

The professionof book writing makeshorseracing seem like a solid, stable business.

—Steinbeck,John Ernest

Publishing a book is often very much like being put on trial for some offence which is quite other than the one you know in your heart you've committed.

—Atwood, Margaret Eleanor

I should like to see the custom introduced of readers who are pleased with a book sending the author some small cash token† Not more than a hundred poundsöthat would be bad for my characterönot less than half a crownöthat would do no good to yours.

—Connolly, Cyril Vernon

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!† The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

—Thoreau, Henry David

   I have only ever read one book in my life, and that is White Fang.It's so frightfully good I've never bothered to read another.

—Mitford, Nancy Freeman

No matter how vital experiencemight be whileyou lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.

—Glasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson

   And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as thestarsforeverand ever.Butthou,ODaniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

—Bible (Old Testament)

   A reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor.

—Addison,Joseph

When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him12 ounces of paper and ink and glueöyou sell him a whole new life.

—Morley, Christopher Darlington

When you are old and greyand full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly how Love fled And paced among the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

—Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;ötheyare the life, the soul of reading;ötake them out of this book for instance,öyou might as well take the book along with them.

—Sterne, Laurence

Readers of novels are strange folk, upon whose probable or even possible tastes no wise book-maker would ever venture.

—Lucas, E(dward) V(errell)

:The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. : It ends with Revelations.

—Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills

Love wakes men, once a lifetime each: They lift their heavy lids, and look; And, lo, what one sweet page can teach, They read with joy, then shut the book.

—Patmore, Coventry Kersey Dighton

Things in book's clothing.

—Lamb, Charles

Thisbook isnot about heroes.Englishpoetry isnot yet fit to speak of them.

—Owen,Wilfred

Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry. The subject of it is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

—Owen,Wilfred

Camarado, this is no book, Who touches this touches a man.

—Whitman,Walt(er)

This little book contains none of your damn business.

—Stilwell, General Joseph

Nous ne pouvons arracher une seule page de notre vie, mais nous pouvons jeter le livre au feu. We cannot tear out a single page from our life, but we can throw the entire book in the fire.

—Samuelson, Sir Sydney

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. 564

—Melville, Herman

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

—Hemingway, Ernest Millar

Pour e¤  crire ce livre essentiel, le seul livre vrai, un grand e¤  crivain n'a pas, dans le sens courant, a'   l'inventer puisqu'il existe de¤ j a'   en chacun de nous, mais a'   le traduire. To write the essential book, the only true book, a great writerdoesnot needto invent becausethebook already exists inside each one of us and merely needs translation.

—Proust, Marcel

A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile, as a fungus or a lichen.

—Thoreau, Henry David

I feel pretty glum and devote myself to reviewing. There is Joyce's Finnegans Wake. I try very hard indeed to understand that book but fail completely. It is almost impossible to decipher, and when one or two lines of understanding emerge like telegraph poles above a flood, theyareat once countered byother polesgoing in the opposite direction.

—Nicolson, Sir Harold

One man is as good as another until he has written a book.

—Jowett, Benjamin

You maydream freely whenyou listen tomusic as well as when you look at painting.When you read a book you are the slave of the author's mind.

—Gauguin, Paul

Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.

—Bible (NewTestament)

Would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?

—Milne, A(lan) A(lexander)

   I'd lovetowritea book ayear, but Idon'tthinkI'd haveany fans.

—Tartt, Donna

Washington is a town where more people probably contemplate writing a book than finish reading one.

—Geracimos, Ann

Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

—Marquis, Don(ald Robert Perry)