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Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

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Books and reading

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• “This book and I have become indivisible. I have placed my feet on this book's last pages, confident of standing so much higher in the world than I ever stood before.”

  Peter Greenaway (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “This book is past the first flush of youth. It is a book that is in puberty. It is hesitating, and from the vantage point of the mature reader, it is both a sad and amusing reminder of the part which is not always attractive enough to be revisited.”

  Peter Greenaway (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Too late. Too late to retreat. Your heart is open. The book has got you. Your body is wide open. This rat of a book has invaded your privacy, worried its feeling into your entrails by every private passage.”

  Peter Greenaway (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Atlas, the man who carries the world, becomes the book of the maps of the world. An example of man, or God, into book. Few have that honour.”

  Peter Greenaway (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Ostanes, the Mede, was one of the celebrated early alchemists. Several writers have recorded for us the existence of a book called The Book of the Divine Prescriptions, which seems to have been the most famous writing of these Persian sages.”

  Osthanes (born 500 BC) first seen 1894 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: , A Short History of Chemistry (1894) p. 6.

• “one of the things about writing is that each book is a beginning. Each book is another hurdle up the ladder or up the mountain of one's country and one's own sensibility.”

  Edna O'Brien (1930–2024) said by 2024 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It was a rude, brutal and purposely ugly book. However, it was an honest book.”

  Lima Barreto (1881–1922) said by 1922 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It's not apparent to me that all these intimate movements of the book, as well as others that complement them-were drowned by what you call the "spell of the phrase." Ever since my first book, moreover, there's been talk about my "phrases." Do not doubt, however, that I wanted - and reached, by God - some thing through them, and not the phrases themselves.”

  Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 1970 letter originally published in Jornal do Brasil

• “The reader may ask why in this book string theory and supersymmetry have not been discussed. ... The fact is that this book is about physics and this implies that the theoretical ideas discussed must be supported by experimental facts. Neither supersymmetry and string theory satisfy this criterion. They are figments of the theoretical mind.”

  Martinus J. G. Veltman (1931–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I have a covenant with God. I cannot ask for anything outside what is written in the covenant. What I will achieve in this world is in a book I am carrying everyday; I just have to open the pages. Outside the book is not mine.”

  T. B. Joshua (1963–2021) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Answering a question on temptation via Facebook - "TB Joshua Talks About Marriage, Deliverance And Personal Experience" Naij (January 13 2014)

• “Most people would define treason as a betrayal of one's country or sovereign. In my book, the book of natural law, treason is properly defined as a betrayal of one's countrymen—and, in particular, the betrayal of the individual's right to life, liberty and property. (To your question, yes, this renders almost all politicians traitors by definition.)”

  Ilana Mercer first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Peerless Malevolence of Redcoat Piers Morgan,” WorldNetDaily.com, January 18, 2013.

• “The Great Code was a silly and sloppy book. It was also a work of very great genius. The point is that genius is not enough. A book worthy of God and of Helen [Frye's wife] must do better than that. (1:160)”

  Northrop Frye (1912–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The real Bible is a sealed book, an apocryphon, a book not to be opened (mentally) until its time has come. (2:568)”

  Northrop Frye (1912–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Even the biggest book is fragmentary: to finish anything, you have to cut your losses. Nobody ever writes his dream book. (33.54)”

  Northrop Frye (1912–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “As I wrote this book, a lot of people asked me if I had a ghostwriter. The answer is yes. It was Ernest Hemingway. And my house is full of his ghost vomit and urine. Hemingway said something that helped me get through this, my first book: "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

  Bob Saget (1956–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A blessed companion is a book,—a book that fitly chosen is a life-long friend.”

  Douglas William Jerrold (1803–1857) said by 1857 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Books, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

  Also quoted by: Douglas Jerrold

• “It's a very strange book (The Secret Doctrine) and I've even told professor Heisenberg, my fellow physicist, to get a copy and keep it on his desk. I urged him to dip into it when he's handicapped by some problem. The strangeness of this book may relax or possibly inspire him.”

  Albert Einstein (1879–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: I Visit Professor Einstein by Jack Brown published in Ojai Valley News,(28 September 1983)

• “Your old friend Congressman Hartley of the Taft Hartley team ... has written a book ... The title of this book is Our New National Labor Policy, the Taft-Hartley Act and the Next Steps. Get that: "The Next Steps" ... They're going even further! ... The Republicans favor a minimum wage — the smaller the minimum the better.”

  Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Harry Truman at Akron (October 11, 1948), Good Old Harry

• “This book is dedicated to everybody who buys this book. Without you, I would have to get an actual job.”

  Dave Barry (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear.”

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will.”

  Henry Miller (1891–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It’s a nitwit idea.” “Yes, sir.” “Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you’ve got nothing else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked.”

  Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Their principles always go to the extreme. They who go with the principles of the ancient Whigs, which are those contained in Mr. Burke's book, never can go too far. ... The opinions maintained in that book never can lead to an extreme, because their foundation is laid in an opposition to extremes.”

  Edmund Burke (1729–1797) said by 1797 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “'Tis pleasure, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't.”

  Lord Byron (1788–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I know not whether this book is worth anything, nor what the world will do with it, or misdo, or entirely forbear to do, as is likeliest; but this I could tell the world: You have not had for a hundred years any book that comes more direct and flamingly from the heart of a living man. Do what you like with it, you—.”

  Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1834 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Remarks to his wife after he had finished writing The French Revolution (12 January 1837), quoted in James Anthony Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London, 1834–1881, Vol. I (1884), p. 84

• “The Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book.”

  Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[F]limsy, desultory readers, who fly from foolish book to foolish book, and get good of none, and mischief of all—are not these as foolish, unhealthy eaters, who mistake their superficial false desire after spiceries and confectioneries for their real appetite, of which even they are not destitute, though it lies far deeper, far quieter, after solid nutritive food?”

  Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If you are in a strait, a very good indication as to choice—perhaps the best you could get—is a book you have a great curiosity about. You are then in the readiest and best of all possible conditions to improve by that book.”

  Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Ts'ui Pe must have said once: I am withdrawing to write a book. And another time: I am withdrawing to construct a labyrinth. Every one imagined two works; to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing.”

  Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.”

  Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Note on (toward) Bernard Shaw" ["Nota sobre (hacia) Bernard Shaw"] (1951)

• “A presentation copy...is a copy of a book whoch does not sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours, which does not sell, in return.”

  Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What most people don't know about love, sex, and relations with other human beings would fill a book. Strangers in Paradise is that book. I have long suspected that what people did in private was much funnier than it ever was erotic. Terry Moore obviously thinks so too. Strangers in Paradise is a delightful new comic, and Terry Moore is a fun writer and a fine cartoonist.”

  Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Blurb on The Complete Strangers In Paradise (2004), Vol. 1

• “This is the sort of book that justifies fatwahs. If WWIII occurred right now, we could die happy knowing Baxter would never write again. If a dinosaur killing asteroid was headed for Earth and I knew Baxter had another book coming up, I would campaign for letting the rock hit, since it is obviously the work of a benevolent deity trying to save us from another Titan.”

  James Nicoll (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me; the book of a self-taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating. When one can have the cooked flesh, why have the raw?”

  Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Diary entry on James Joyce's Ulysses (16 August 1922), quoted in Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary (1953; 1965), p. 47

• “The Book of the science of Mechanics must precede the Book of useful inventions.”

  Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) said by 1519 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I am mimetic. If I write a book set in the seventeenth century, I write in a Baroque style. If I’m writing a book set in a newspaper office, I write in Journalese.”

  Umberto Eco (1932–2016) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: quoted in Marco Belpoliti, "Umberto Eco: How I Wrote my Books" (2015)

• “A book, once it is printed and published, becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book "means" thereafter, perforce, — both grammatically and actually, — whatever meaning this or that reader gets out of it.”

  James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: A Note on Cabellian Harmonics" in Cabellian Harmonics (April 1928)

• “The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity I need. My name in print. That really makes somebody. Things are going to start happening to me now!”

  Steve Martin (born 1945) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As Navin R. Johnson in The Jerk (1979)

• “Most people don’t have very many numbers in their address book they use their recents as their address book. Right? How many of you do that? I bet more than a few.”

  Steve Jobs (1955–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.”

  Christopher Morley (1890–1957) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Haunted Bookshop (1919)

• “There is something radically wrong with a civilization, and a system of education, which permit 98% of the people to go through life as failures. But I did not write this book for the purpose of moralizing on the rights and wrongs of the world; that would require a book a hundred times the size of this one. p. 85”

  Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) said by 1799 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I don’t believe a committee can write a book. ... It can, oh, govern a country, perhaps. But I don’t believe it can write a book.”

  Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interviewed by Christopher Wright (1955). Printed in James Nelson (ed.) Wisdom: Conversations with the Elder Wise Men of Our Day (New York: Norton, 1958) p. 208

• “This book was written in 1920 in the car of a military train and amid the flames of the civil war. The circumstance the reader must keep before his eyes if he wishes rightly to understand not only the basic material of the book, but also its harsh allusion, and particularly the tone in which it is written.”

  Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Whether or not the soul is immortal is a fact in nature and cannot be changed by any book whatever. If I am immortal, I am. If am not, no book can render me so. It is no more wonderful that I should live again than that I do live.”

  Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.”

  Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) said by 1592 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Also quoted by: Michael De Montaigne

• “Paymasters come in only two sizes: one sort shows you where the book says that you can’t have what you've got coming to you; the second sort digs through the book until he finds a paragraph that lets you have what you need even if you don’t rate it.”

  Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “When you publish a book, it’s the world’s book. The world edits it.”

  Philip Roth (1933–2018) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: A Visit with Philip Roth," interview with James Atlas, The New York Times Book Review (2 September 1979), p. BR1

• “Our book is Genesis. Their book is Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the original environmental hoax.”

  Ann Coulter (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “He was a one-book man. Some men have only one book in them; others, a library.”

  Sydney Smith (1771–1845) said by 1845 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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