Books

Famous quotes containing the word books:

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

“All ... forms of consensus about “great” books and “perennial” problems, once stabilized, tend to deteriorate eventually into something philistine. The real life of the mind is always at the frontiers of “what is already known.” Those great books don’t only need custodians and transmitters. To stay alive, they also need adversaries. The most interesting ideas are heresies.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

“What can books of men that wive
In a dragon-guarded land,
Paintings of the dolphin-drawn
Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons
Do, but awake a hope to live...?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)