Further Words on Books
Further Words on Books
You cannot know me long without discovering that I am a dedicated bibliophile. Over the years I have read a great deal, everything from lighthearted fiction to poetry to philosophical tomes. Some of these books I have treasured in my mind and heart, and plan to share them with my own children some day. You can read about some of these at the Bibliotheca.
I did an installment of Posie of Panises on literature in November 2007, but I have more quotations to share. So I present to you here a generous collection of what great men and authors have to say about books and the joys and power of reading.
They are divided into eight rough sections: The Great Book, Books as the Minds of the Past, The Value of Books, The Influence of Books, The Society of Books, The Pleasures of Books, The Bibliophile, and Last Words. Be sure to comment and share your own favorite quotations on literature!
the great Book
The great standard of literature, as to purity and exactness of style, is the Bible. Blair
Let all writers have their due esteem, but compare none of them with the Word of God. We will not refuse their service, but we must abhor them as rivals or competitors. It is the sign of a distempered heart that loseth the relish of Scripture excellency. Richard Baxter
books as the minds of the past
These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out his own voice... and just as the touch of one button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart. Gilbert Highet.
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.
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages, Books are the true levelers. They give to all who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. Channing
In my library I have profitably dwelt among the shining lights, with which the learned, wise, and holy men of all ages have illuminated the world. Richard Baxter
Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message to us from the dead—from human souls whom we never saw, who lived perhaps thousands of miles away; and yet these, on those little sheets of paper, speak to us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers. Charles Kingsley.
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind. James Russell Lowell.
Books are embalmed minds. Bovee.
I love to lose myself in other men’s minds... Books think for me. Charles Lamb.
the value of books
A book that is shut is but a block. Thomas Fuller.
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. Edmund Burke.
Think as well as read... Yield not your minds to the passive impressions which others may make upon them. Hear what they have to say; but examine it, weigh it and judge it for yourselves. This will enable you to make a right use of books—to use them as helpers, not as guides to your understanding; as counselors, not as dictators of what you are to think and believe. Tryon Edwards.
The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book equals the Bible for that. James McCosh.
Bread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book. John Ruskin.
He fed his spirit with the bread of books. Edwin Markham.
‘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 unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude, 1870.
Far more seemly were it for thee to have thy study full of books than thy purse full of money. John Lylie.
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down and commence living on its hint... What I begin by reading, I must finish by acting. Henry David Thoreau.
That book is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with profit. Amos Bronson Alcott.
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which is suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts. Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The art of reading is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one’s encounter with it in a book. André Maurois.
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch. Augustus Hare.
Nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind. Charles Dudley Warner.
A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading. Jeremy Collier.
The wise man reads both books and life itself. Lin Yutang.
the influence of books
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. Oscar Wilde.
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 got ourselves. E. M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy, 1951.
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. Francis Bacon.
Man builds no structure which outlives a book. Ware.
There are only two powers in the world, the sword and the pen; and in the end the former is always conquered by the latter. Napoleon Bonaparte.
the society of books
To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one. Chinese saying.
When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than was there before. Clifton Fadiman.
A good book on your shelf is a friend that turns its back to you and remains a friend. Unknown.
Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves. Jeremy Collier.
Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books—even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome. William Ewart Gladstone.
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. Charles W. Eliot.
A blessed companion is a book—a book that, fitly chosen, is a lifelong friend... a book that, at a touch, pours its heart into our own. Douglas Jerrold.
For friends,,, do but look upon good Books: they are true friends that will neither flatter nor dissemble. Francis Bacon.
No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books. Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command. Francesco Petrarch.
I often derive a peculiar satisfaction in conversing with the ancient and modern dead—who yet live and speak excellently in their works. My neighbors think me often alone—and yet at such times I am in company with more than five hundred mutes—each of them whom, at my pleasure, communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs—quite as intelligently as any person living can do by uttering of words. Laurence Sterne.
the pleasure of books
O for a Booke and a shadie nooke, eyther in-a-doore or out;/ With the grene leaves whisp-ring overhede, or the Streete cryes about./ Where I mai Reade all at my ease, both of the Newe and Olde;/ For a jollie goode Booke whereon to looke is better to me than Golde. John Wilson.
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,/ And all the sweet serenity of books. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
A large, still book is a piece of quietness, succulent and nourishing in a noisy world, which I approach and imbibe with “a sort of greedy enjoyment,” as Marcel Proust said of those rooms of his old home whose air was “saturated with the bouquet of silence.” Holbrook Jackson.
To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate conversations with men of unseen generations—such is a pleasure beyond compare. Kenko Yoshida.
We should read to give our souls the chance to luxuriate. Henry Miller.
A book is like a garden carried in the pocket. Chinese proverb.
Let your bookcases and your shelves be your gardens and your pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices and the myrrh. Judah Ibn Tibbon.
A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counsellor, a multitude of counsellors. Henry Ward Beecher.
There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs. Henry Ward Beecher.
the bibliophile
Old books are still only just out to those who have not read them. Samuel Butler.
When you sell a man a book you don’t sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night—there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book. Christopher Morley.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over men who can’t read them. Mark Twain, attributed.
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read. G. K. Chesterton.
I would be most content if my children grew up to be the type of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. Anna Quindlen, “Enough Bookshelves,” New York Times, 7 August 1991.
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. Henry Ward Beecher.
A house without books is like a room without windows. Heinrich Mann.
A book reads better which is our own and has been so long known to us that we know the topography of its blots and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins. Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia, 1833.
I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things. George Robert Gissing.
Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one. Augustine Birrell, Obiter Dicta, “Book Buying.”
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. Anatole France.
last words
A good book should leave you slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it. William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958.
My test of a good novel is dreading to begin the last chapter. Thomas Helm.
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. Paul Sweeney.
A good book has no ending. R. D. Cumming.
Painting: Serenity. Reid Robert Payton.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008