Meaner/books

Famous quotes containing the words meaner and/or books:

    I don’t like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meaner than I could have imagined.... The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    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)