I came across a good book of quotes about books, piblished in 2001,in Speaking of Books: The Best Things Ever Said About Books and Book Collecting, edited by Rob Kaplan and Harold Rabinowitz. Below are some excerpts from his book and then a sampling of the quotes featured in his book:
The Nature Of Quotes
“But
there may be something more to it than that.
At times, while reading, you may have felt the presence of the author
coming to you through the words. At such
times it seems the author is standing right there, and you are flushed with a
sense of recognition – you believe you would know this person if the two of you
ever met.
“If
we are familiar with an author’s work, we imagine him or her speaking to us,
and feel an intimacy with the author through the words on the paper. It’s the sense we have of the writer that
makes us seek out other works by the same author; it’s what allows writers to
get away with writing the same book over and over again. Because we felt the presence of the writer
coming through in the first book, having enjoyed the writer’s company during
that reading, we decide to entertain another visit from an old friend.”
Literacy
“The
literacy problem isn’t just that there are too many people who don’t know how
to read, the problem is that there are too many people without the requisite
patience to endure an entire book!”
Preserving Printed Books
“If
this collection is to be also a celebration of books, and not an extended
epitaph, we are going to have to offer some reason for believing that books
will endure and survive the current spate of technological wonder-working on
their own merits. We will argue that
books are better than these other systems and that reading a book is so unique
and special an experience that readers will keep reading books and looking to
books for the kind of insight and experience that only books can offer.
“The
same is true in encounters with books. The entire book is before us, and we are
influenced by the total package: the jacket; the cover; the endpapers
(decorative or not); the quality; color, cut and texture of the paper; the size
of the page; the size, font, and spacing of text and the layout of each page;
the way the chapters open and the way notes and bibliographic materials are
organized; whether and how illustrations are presented, and how they are
captioned. Anyone who thinks these elements
don’t really matter will have no objective to their only child’s wedding being
a come-as-you-are affair at a local diner.
We take the book design for granted until a poor design destroys a
book. Similarly, we take our sensual
experience of books for granted
“But
ultimately the pleasure each of us derives from reading is a very personal one,
and one that, despite the efforts of all those who have tried to define it for
us, we must all define for ourselves.”
Books Forever?
“There
are others, however, who introduce a cautionary note, who warn us that we can
grow too dependent on books. They remind
us that, for all the benefits we can derive from books, and although we may
tend to see them as such, they are not a panacea.”
Libraries
“It
is impossible to overemphasize the role that libraries – particularly public
libraries – have played in fostering the love of books and reading in our
society.”
A Refuge
“Books
and reading are presented as a refuge from the world, a safe haven where
nothing and no one can intrude.”
Knowledge vs. Wisdom
“Equally
– if not more – important are those who warn us not to confuse knowledge with
wisdom. While the former, they
acknowledge, can be gathered from books, the latter can only be acquired as a
result of our own thought processes.”
Authors & Readers
“The
relationship between authors and their readers is a unique one, with the
former, perhaps of necessity, more aware of this uniqueness than the
latter. In what other circumstances do
individuals reveal their innermost thoughts, their deepest and darkest secrets,
to complete-albeit invisible-strangers?
“Of
course, authors and their readers want and expect different things from this
unique relationship.
“The
one thing, however, that both writers and readers seem to agree on is that
there is a relationship, and that both participants have a role to play in it,
for good or ill.”
Freedom
“These
are the human enemies of books, those who believe they are entitled to decide
what we should all think, recognize that the ability to read freely inevitably
leads to the ability to think freely, and accordingly would keep books of which
they don’t approve out of our hands.”
Here are some of the quotes from his book that resonated with me:
“Books
are the windows through which the soul looks out. A home without books is like a room without
windows.”
--Henry
Ward Beecher The Sermons of Henry Ward
Beecher (1870) [See Cicero, p. 7]
“Are
we not driven to the conclusion that of the things which man can do or make
here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things
called Books?”
--Thomas
Carlyle, “The Hero as a Man of Letters,” On Heroes,
Hero-Worship, and the Heroic (1841)
“A
room without books is like a body without a soul.” Cicero (See Henry Ward Beecher, p.5)
“All
the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided
mortals with the remedy of books.”
--Richard
de Bury, Philobiblon (1473)
“To
gain glory by books you must not only possess them but know them; their
lodgings must be in your brain and not on your book-shelf.”
--Francesco
Petrarch, in The Great Book-Collectors
by Charles and Mary Elton (1893)
“The
best books for man are not always those which the wise recommend, but often
those which meet the peculiar wants, the natural thirsts of his mind, and
therefore awaken interest and rival thought.”
--William
Ellery Channing
“Never
judge a cover by its book.”
--Fran
Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life (1978)
“The
printing-press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern
times, one sometimes forgets which.”
--James
M. Barrie, Sentimental Tommy (1896)
“Do
you want to get a new ideas? Read old
books. Do you want to find old
ideas? Read new ones.”
--Edward
Bulwer-Lytton, in the Times Literary
Supplement, October 18, 1906
“The
pen is mightier than the sword.”
--Edward
Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu (1839)
“We
become so used to having the famous books around, most of the time we look at
them as though they were statues of generals in public parks.”
--George
P. Elliot, Wonder for Huckleberry
Finn (1958)
“The
books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
--Oscar
Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
(1891)
“The
bibliophile is the master of his books, the bibliomaniac their slave.”
--Hanns
Bohatta [See Gustave Mouravit, p. 65]
“When
I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.”
--Desiderius
Erasmus [See John Lyly p. 64; Tom Raabe, p. 66 and Robert Southey p.66]
“I
have no mistress but my books.”
--S.J.
Adair Fitzgerald, “My Books,” Book-Song
“I
divide all readers into two classes: those
who read to remember and those who read to forget.”
--William
Lyon Phelps
“When
you re-read a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you
see more in you than there was before.”
--Clifton
Fadiman, Any Number Can Play (1957)
[See Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 87; A.W. and J.C. Hare, p. 89; and Edmund Wilson,
p. 96]
“The
book-lover needs most to be reminded that man’s business here is to know for
the sake of living, not to live for the sake of knowing.”
--Frederic
Harrison, The Choice of Books and Other
Literary Pieces (1886)
“Journalism
allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity
to live it.”
--John
Hersey, in Time, March 13, 1950
“No
two people read the same book.”
--Edmund
Wilson, in the Sunday Times, July 25,
1971 [See Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 87; Clifton Fadiman, p. 88, and A.W. and J.C.
Hare, p.89]
“You
can never be too thin, too rich, or have too many books.”
--Carter
Burden, in Vogue, March 1987
“What
refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are
a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him
to attempt to read a hundred?”
--Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Sr., Over the Teacups
(1891)
“I
would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think
decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”
--Anna
Quindlen, “Enough Bookshelves,” The New
York Times, August 7, 1991
“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.”
--Robertson
Davies, The Enthusiasms of Robertson
Davies (1989)
“Any
book that is important ought to be at once read through twice…because we are
not in the same temper and disposition on both readings.”
--Arthur
Schopenhauer, “On Books and Reading.” The Art of Literature (1818)
“Some
books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.”
--W.H.
Auden, “Reading,” The Dyer’s Hand
(1962)
“One
of the misfortunes of life is that one must read thousands of books only to
discover that one need not have read them.”
--Thomas
deQuincey
“Books
worth reading are worth re-reading.”
--Holbrook
Jackson, Maxims of Books and Reading
(1934)
“A
classic is a book that doesn’t have to be written again.”
--Carl
van Doren [See Bennett, p. 127; Calvino, p. 128; Chesterton, p. 129; Kazin, p.
133; Miller, p. 134; Pound, p. 136; and Winchester, p. 138]
“The
best service a book can render you is not to impart truth, but to make you
think it out for yourself.”
--Elbert
Hubbard, The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard,
compiled by Elbert Hubbard II (1917)
“The
sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is
art and literature.”
--Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Lecture 1972
“Literature
exists to please – to lighten the burden of men’s lives; to make them for a
short while forget their sorrow and their sins, their silenced hearths, their
disappointed hopes, their grim futures – and those men of letters are the best
loved who have best performed literature’s truest office.”
--Augustine
Birrell, “The Office of Literature,” The
Collected Essays and Addresses (1922)
“When
we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness.”
--Vincent
Starrett
“The
trouble with the publishing business is that too many people who have half a
mind to write a book do so. “
--William
Targ, in “No Author is a Man of Genius to His Publisher” by William Rossa Cole,
The New York Times Book Review, September
3, 1989
“Books
may be burned and cities sacked, but truth, like the yearning for freedom,
lives in the hearts of humble men.”
--Franklin
D. Roosevelt, in his acceptance speech at the Democratic Party National
Convention, June 17, 1936
“People
say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”
--Logan
Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts (1931)
[See Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. p. 235, and Robert Louis Stevenson, below]
“The
man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read
them.”
--Mark
Twain
“Books
are the cosmography of man, a world in themselves.”
--Holbrook
Jackson, The Anatomy of Bibliomania
(1930)
DON”T MISS THESE!!!
Good book PR podcast -- Book consultant Cathy Fyock interviewed Brian Feinblum, Book PR Expert https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/3708542050358744066
2017 Book Publicity & Marketing Toolkit For Writers Of All Genres
Will You Fight Trump’s Era Of Big Ignorance?
Author Blogs: What Should They Say?
The Network of Book Marketing For Authors
Which Of These 6 Reasons Inspires You To Write Books?
How To Craft Press Releases That Net Your Book Media Exposure
The right book marketing strategy for you
Overcoming Book Marketer's Block in 10 Easy Steps
Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.