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)
“Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as “spectacles” to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions.... The learned are mere literary drudges.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)