Quotable Quotes (24 page)

 

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

—
A
LDOUS
H
UXLEY

 

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

—
J
ESSAMYN
W
EST

 

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

—
E
DMUND
B
URKE

 

No one ever really paid the price of a book—only the price of printing it.

—
L
OUIS
I
.
K
AHN

 

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

—
H
ENRY
D
AVID
T
HOREAU

 

I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading.

—
T
HOMAS
B
ABINGTON
M
ACAULAY

 

My test of a good novel is dreading to begin the last chapter.

—
T
HOMAS
H
ELM

 

A book is a success when people who haven't read it pretend they have.

—
L
OS
A
NGELES
T
IMES
S
YNDICATE

 

If you would know what nobody knows, read what everybody reads, just one year afterward.

—
R
ALPH
W
ALDO
E
MERSON

 

I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.

—
W
ILLIAM
L
YON
P
HELPS

 

The wise man reads both books and life itself.

—
L
IN
Y
UTANG

 

The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history.

—
C
ARL
R
OWAN

 

The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.

—
C
HRISTOPHER
M
ORLEY

 

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

—
R
AY
B
RADBURY

 

Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest.

—
L
ADY
B
IRD
J
OHNSON

 

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

—
F
RANZ
K
AFKA

 

A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.

—
C
AROLINE
G
ORDON

How to Read a Novel
'

 

You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.

—
P
AUL
S
WEENEY

 

Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves.

—
J
EREMY
C
OLLIER

 

There is a wonder in reading braille that the sighted will never know: to touch words and have them touch you back.

—
J
IM
F
IEBIG

 

A book, tight shut, is but a block of paper.

—
C
HINESE PROVERB

 

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

—
W
ILLIAM
S
TYRON

 

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

—
R
OBERTSON
D
AVIES

The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davie
s

 

“Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are” is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.

—
F
RANÇOIS
M
AURIAC

 

When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.

—
E
NRIQUE
J
ARDIEL
P
ONCELA

 

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

—
H
EINRICH
H
EINE

 

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

—
R
AY
B
RADBURY

 

An author retains the singular distinction of being the only person who can remain a bore long after he is dead.

—
S
YDNEY
J
.
H
ARRIS

 

For a man to become a poet he must be in love, or miserable.

—
G
EORGE
G
ORDON,
L
ORD
B
YRON

 

You don't have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.

—J
OHN
C
IARDI

 

In the end, the poem is not a thing we see; it is, rather, a light by which we may see—and what we see is life.

—
R
OBERT
P
ENN
W
ARREN

 

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

—
R
ITA
D
OVE

 

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

—
R
OBERT
F
ROST

 

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

—
C
ARL
S
ANDBURG

 

The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.

—
T
OM
C
LANCY

 

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

—
W
ENTWORTH
D
ILLON

 

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.

—
G
.
K
.
C
HESTERTON

 

Let us read and let us dance—two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.

—
V
OLTAIRE

 

I cannot conceive how a novelist could fail to pity or love the smallest creation of his imagination; incomplete as these characters may be, they are the writer's bond with the real world, its suffering and heartbreak.

—
G
ABRIELLE
R
OY

The Fragile Lights Of Earth: Articles And Memories 1942–1970

 

When you take stuff from one writer, it's plagiarism; but when you take it from many writers it's research.

—
W
ILSON
M
IZNER

 

October is crisp days and cool nights, a time to curl up around the dancing flames and sink into a good book.

—
J
OHN
S
INOR

in
Union-Tribune
(San Diego, California)

 

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

—
R
ED
S
MITH

 

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

—
B
ENJAMIN
D
ISRAELI

 

A
RT IS A STAPLE, LIKE BREAD 
. . .

 

Art is a staple, like bread or wine or a warm coat in winter. Man's spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach growls for food.

—
I
RVING
S
TONE

Depths of Glory

 

Art is the signature of civilization.

—
B
EVERLY
S
ILLS

 

Art extends each man's short time on earth by carrying from man to man the whole complexity of other men's lifelong experience, with all its burdens, colors and flavor.

—
A
LEKSANDR
S
OLZHENITSYN

One Word of Truth . . .

 

Every fragment of song holds a mirror to a past moment for someone.

—
F
ANNY
C
RADOCK

War Comes to Castle Rising

 

A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.

—
S
IR
J
OSHUA
R
EYNOLDS

 

Anyone who says you can't see a thought simply doesn't know art.

—
W
YNETKA
A
NN
R
EYNOLDS

 

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

—
O
SCAR
W
ILDE

 

Art is the demonstration that the ordinary is extraordinary.

—
A
MÉDÉE
O
ZENFANT

Foundations of Modern Art

 

Art doesn't reproduce the visible but rather makes it visible.

—
P
AUL
K
LEE

 

It has been said that art is a tryst; for the joy of it maker and beholder meet.

—
K
OJIRO
T
OMITA

 

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.

—
T
WYLA
T
HARP

 

Half of art is knowing when to stop.

—
A
RTHUR
W
ILLIAM
R
ADFORD

 

The other arts persuade us, but music takes us by surprise.

—
E
DUARD
H
ANSLICK

 

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

—
P
AT
C
ONROY

Beach Music

 

Country music is three chords and the truth.

—
H
ARLAN
H
OWARD

 

Music is the way our memories sing to us across time.

—
L
ANCE
M
ORROW

in
Time

 

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

—A
LDOUS
H
UXLEY

Music at Night and Other Essays

 

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

—
B
ERTHOLD
A
UERBACH

 

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

—
L
EO
T
OLSTOY

 

Where words fail, music speaks.

—
H
ANS
C
HRISTIAN
A
NDERSEN

 

Music is a higher revelation than philosophy.

—
L
UDWIG VAN
B
EETHOVEN

 

People who make music together cannot be enemies, at least not while the music lasts.

—
P
AUL
H
INDEMITH

 

He who sings frightens away his ills.

—
M
IGUEL DE
C
ERVANTES
S
AAVEDRA

 

God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing.

—
R
ABINDRANATH
T
AGORE

 

If I may venture my own definition of a folk song, I should call it “an individual flowering on a common stem.”

—
R
ALPH
V
AUGHN
W
ILLIAMS

 

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail.

—
L
UCIANO
P
AVAROTTI

 

No one should be allowed to play the violin until he has mastered it.

—
J
IM
F
IEBIG

 

Those move easiest who have learned to dance.

—
A
LEXANDER
P
OPE

 

The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.

—
A
GNES DE
M
ILLE