Famous quotes containing the word books:
“My residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university; and though I was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more than ever come within the influence of those books which circulate round the world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and are now merely copied from time to time on to linen paper.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Avoid all kinds of pleasantry and facetiousness in thy discourse with her, and ... suffer her not to look into Rabelais, or Scarron, or Don Quixote—
MThey are all books which excite laughter; and ... there is no passion so serious, as lust.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)