Famous quotes
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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“I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I have not loved Shakespeare.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Books are sepulchres of thought.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Wind over the Chimney, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and short-comings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self-assertion of youth.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The scholar and the world! The endless strife, The discord in the harmonies of life! The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books; The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some books are lies frae end to end.”
Robert Burns (1759–1796) first seen 1787 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Death and Dr. Hornbook, st. 1 (1787)
“Up! up! my friend, and quit your books, Or surely you 'll grow double! Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks! Why all this toil and trouble?”
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) said by 1850 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books!”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Alas, our noble men of genius, Heaven's real messengers to us, they also rendered nearly futile by the wasteful time;—preappointed they everywhere, and assiduously trained by all their pedagogues and monitors, to "rise in Parliament," to compose orations, write books, or in short speak words, for the approval of reviewers; instead of doing real kingly work to be approved of by the gods!”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the whole, ought I not to rejoice that God was pleased to give me such a father; that from earliest years I had the example of a real man of God's own making continually before me? Let me learn of him. Let me write my books as he built his houses, and walk as blamelessly through this shadow world; if God so will, to rejoin him at last. Amen.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Books should to one of these four ends conduce, For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.”
John Denham (1615–1669) said by 1669 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.”
Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) said by 1774 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unlearned men of books assume the care, As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair.”
Edward Young (1683–1765) said by 1765 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Books, the children of the brain.”
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) said by 1745 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.”
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) first seen 1711 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: No. 166 (10 September 1711)
“Whence thy learning? Hath thy toil O'er books consumed the midnight oil?”
John Gay (1685–1732) said by 1732 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seemed proper indeed to crowd the pages with children, for in real life they run all over; the world is covered thickly with the prints of their little footsteps, though, as a rule, books written for grown-up people are kept almost clear of them.”
Jean Ingelow (1820–1897) said by 1897 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say "at last", I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he had hoped to do — so much have I enjoyed it.”
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Arthur Greeves (7 March 1916); in Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis: Family Letters, 1905–1931 (2004), p. 170
“Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. Because when you make love too much at least you get a damned clarte that is like no other light. A very clear and hollow light.”
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Bernard Berenson (2 October 1952); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker
“All good books have one thing in common — they are truer than if they had really happened.”
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pt. 2, Ch. 7 - Similar to his remark in "A Letter from Cuba" (1934)
“Between them these two books sum up our present predicament. Capitalism leads to dole queues, the scramble for markets, and war. Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship, and war. There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the intellect, which can only happen if the concept of right and wrong is restored to politics.”
George Orwell (1903–1950) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek and The Mirror of the Past by K. Zilliacus, reviewed in The Observer (9 April 1944).
“It is just thinkable that books may some day be written by machinery....”
George Orwell (1903–1950) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of A Coat of Many Colours: Occasional Essays by Herbert Read, Poetry Quarterly (Winter 1945)
“It would probably not be beyond human ingenuity to write books by machinery.”
George Orwell (1903–1950) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Prevention of Literature. Polemic, No. 2 (January 1946)
“If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver's Travels among them.”
George Orwell (1903–1950) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels" (1946)
“That devastating omniscience! That noxious, horn-spectacled refinement! And the money that such refinement means! For after all, what is there behind it, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money.”
George Orwell (1903–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An immense amount, enough to fill many books, has already been written on the subject [of the Barcelona fighting], and I do not suppose I should exaggerate if I said that nine-tenths of it is untruthful.”
George Orwell (1903–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am a writer. The impulse of every writer is to "keep out of politics". What he wants is to be left alone so that he can go on writing books in peace. But unfortunately it is becoming obvious that this ideal is no more practicable than that of the petty shop-keeper who hopes to preserve his independence in the teeth of the chain-stores.”
George Orwell (1903–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my Brain are studies & Chambers fill'd with books & pictures of old, which I wrote & painted in ages of Eternity before my mortal life;”
William Blake (1757–1827) said by 1827 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Letters Of William Blake (1956), p. 50
“I know of one semibarbarous zone whose librarians repudiate the "vain and superstitious habit" of trying to find sense in books, equating such a quest with attempting to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines on the palms of one's hand.”
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Library of Babel" (1941); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
“Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.”
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I confess I have no great notion of the use of books, except to amuse a railway journey; although, I believe, there are some very exact treatises on astronomy, the use of the globes, agriculture, and the art of making paper flowers. Upon the less apparent provinces of life I fear you will find nothing truthful.”
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.”
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) said by 1616 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It has been said a thousand times and in a thousand books that ancestor-worship is for the most part the source of primitive religions, and it may be strictly said that what most distinguishes man from the other animals is that, in one form or another, he guards his dead and does not give them over to the neglect of teeming mother earth; he is an animal that guards its dead.”
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And what has Don Quixote left, do you ask? I answer, he has left himself, and a man, a living and eternal man, is worth all the theories and all the philosophies. Other peoples have left chiefly institutions, books; we have left souls; St. Teresa is worth any institution, any Critique of Pure Reason.”
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My chest of books divide amongst my friends.”
John Keats (1795–1821) first seen 1821 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last will and testament (1821)
“W. Somerset Maugham, Collected Short Stories, I (Penguin Books, 1977)”
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Destiny gave me only two things: a few accounting books and the gift of dreaming.”
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is nothing to say about anything. So there can be no limit to the number of books.”
Emil Cioran (1911–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some folks wouldn't even speak when they passed me on the street. Then MGM came to town to film Intruder in the Dust, and that made some difference because I'd brought money into Oxford [Mississippi]. But it wasn't until the Nobel Prize that they really thawed out. They couldn't understand my books, but they could understand thirty thousand dollars.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the opinion of his neighbors of his writing profession, as quoted in "Faulkner Without Fanfare" in Esquire (July 1963), later published in M. Thomas Inge's Conversations with William Faulkner (1999), p. 102
“Whilst the misguided Follower climbs with Pain, Mountains of Whimsies, heapt in his own Brain, Stumbling from Thought to Thought, falls headlong down Into Doubt's boundless Sea, where like to drown, Books bear him up a-while, and make him try To swim with Bladders of Philosophy.”
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) said by 1680 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Critics generally come to be critics by reason not of their fitness for this but of their unfitness for anything else. Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes, and counsel should be heard on both sides.”
Samuel Butler (novelist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.”
Samuel Butler (novelist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whoever converses much among the old books, will be something hard to please among the new.”
Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet (1628–1699) first seen 1690 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Miscellanea (1690), Part II, Essay "Upon the Ancient and Modern Learning".
“Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.”
Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet (1628–1699) first seen 1690 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Miscellanea (1690), Part II, "Upon the Ancient and Modern Learning".
Also quoted by: Sir William Temple
“Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.”
Samuel Paterson (1728–1802) first seen 1772 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Joineriana: or The Book of Scraps (London: 1772), Vol. I, p. 40
“Your borrowers of books—those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source