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~Read not to contradict
and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and
discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others
to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books
are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some
few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
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-Francis Bacon
The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall, 1625
"Of Studies"
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~I have always imagined that
Paradise will be a kind of library.
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-Jorge Luis Borges
El Hacedor / The Dreamtigers,
1960
"Poema de los Dones"
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By the age of three...I was already an addicted
reader. I still crave daily immersion in experience other than my own; (it
needn't be more pleasant, exciting or illuminating--merely other) and I still
fall into books as though into catalepsy.
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-Brigid Brophy
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Home is where the books are.
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-Richard Burton
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Each time we re-read a book we get more out of
it because we put more into it; a different person is reading it, and
therefore it is a different book.
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-Muriel Clark
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Never judge a book by its movie.
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-J. W. Eagen
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~A man is known by the
books he reads. . .
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-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals, 1909-14
Entry for 24 Jun 1830
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When I get a little money, I buy books. If
I have any left over, I buy food and pay the rent.
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-Desiderius Erasmus
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I suggest that 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 gone
ourselves.
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-E. M. Foster
(cf. LEARNING : Gibran)
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Never lend books, for no one ever returns
them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have
lent me.
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-Anatole France
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Everything comes to him who waits except
a loaned book.
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-Kin Hubbard
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Did you ever hear anyone say, "That work had
better be banned because I might read it and it might be very dangerous to
me?"
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-Joseph Henry Jackson
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~There is not so poor a
book in the world that would not be a prodigious effort were it wrought out
entirely by a single mind, without the aid of prior investigators.
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-Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell's
Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791
July 28, 1763
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~I could spend the rest of
my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
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-Malcolm X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As told to
Alex Haley, 1965
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Outside of a dog, a book is your best
friend, and inside a dog, it's too dark to read.
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-Groucho Marx
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~Show me the books he loves
and I shall know
The man far better than through mortal friends.
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-S. Weir Mitchell
Complete Poems of S. Weir Mitchell, 1914
"Books and the Man", 1905
Pt. 2, "Poems of Occasion"
Originally presented to the Charaka Club, March 4, 1905
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The real purpose of books is to trap the
mind into doing its own thinking.
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-Christopher Morley
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*[Y]our own books belong
to you; you treat them with that affectionate intimacy that annihilates
formality. Books are for use, not show; you should own no book that you
are afraid to mark up, or afraid to place on the table, wide open and face
down.
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-William Lyon Phelps
Radio broadcast, April 6, 1933
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*A borrowed book is like
a guest in the house; it must be treated with punctiliousness, with a
certain considerate formality. You must see that it sustains no damage;
it must not suffer while under your roof. You cannot leave it carelessly,
you cannot mark it, you cannot turn down the pages, you cannot use it
familiarly. And then, some day, although this is seldom done, you really
ought to give it back.
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-William Lyon Phelps
Radio broadcast, April 6, 1933
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No man understands a deep book until he has
seen and lived at least part of its contents.
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-Ezra Pound
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*Keating leaned back with
a sense of warmth and well-being. He liked this book. It had made the
routine of his Sunday morning breakfast a profound spiritual experience;
he was certain that it was profound, because he didn't understand it.
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-Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead, 1943
Part Two, "Ellsworth M. Toohey"
Chapter 4
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*Eight months ago Lancelot
Clokey had stood with a manuscript in his hand before Ellsworth Toohey. . .
not believing it when Toohey told him that his book would top the
best-seller list. But two hundred thousand copies sold had made it
impossible for Clokey ever to recognize any truth again in any form.
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-Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead, 1943
Part Three, "Gail Wynand"
Chapter 6
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*If there were no books,
no written records, think how prodigious a time twenty-three centuries would
be. With four generations per century, twenty-three centuries occupies
almost a hundred generations of human beings. If information could be
passed on merely by word of mouth, how little we should know of our past,
how slow would be our progress! Everything would depend on what ancient
findings we had accidentally been told about, and how accurate the account
was. Past information might be revered, but in successive retellings it
would become progressively more muddled and eventually lost. Books permit
us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library
connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature,
of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the
entire planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring,
and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge
of the human species. Public libraries depend on voluntary contributions.
I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about
the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all
be tested by how well we support our libraries.
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-Carl Sagan
Cosmos, 1980
Chapter XI, "The Persistence of Memory"
(cf. HISTORY : Niane)
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*A book is made from a
tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves")
imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the
voice of another person---perhaps someone dead for thousands of years.
(Across the millenia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside
your head, directly to you.)
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-Carl Sagan
Cosmos, 1980
Chapter XI, "The Persistence of Memory"
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*For the price of a modest
meal you can ponder the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the origin of
species, the interpretation of dreams, the nature of things.
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-Carl Sagan
Cosmos, 1980
Chapter XI, "The Persistence of Memory"
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*Writing is perhaps the
greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant
epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time.
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-Carl Sagan
Cosmos, 1980
Chapter XI, "The Persistence of Memory"
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*What really knocks me out
is a book that, when you're all 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.
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-Holden Caulfield, a character in J.D.
Salinger's
The Catcher In The Rye, 1945
Chapter 3
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Books are funny little portable pieces of
thought.
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-Susan Sontag
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A great book should leave you with many
experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives
while reading it.
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-William Styron
Interview for Writers At Work, 1st series, 1958
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~Fools admire everything in
a celebrated author, I read only to please myself, and like nothing better
than what answers my purpose.
(Les sots admirent tout dans un auteur estimé. Je ne lis que pour moi ; je
n'aime que ce qui est à mon usage.)
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-Voltaire (François Marie Arouet)
Candide, 1759
Chapter 25, "Candide and Martin Pay a Visit to Seignor Pococurante, a Noble
Venetian" / "Visite Chez Le Seigneur Pococuranté, Noble Vénitien"
Unknown trans.
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~The books that the world
calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
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-Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
Chapter 19
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I would never read a book if it were possible
for me to talk half an hour with the man who wrote it.
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-Woodrow Wilson
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