Waiting rooms were made for books-of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone’s favorite, the john.
Once I fell in love with books, I fell in love completely.
The book is not the important part. The book is the delivery system. The important part is the story and the talent.
But it’s writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe.
I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book – something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.
A book is like a pump. It gives nothing unless first you give to it. You prime a pump with your own water, you work the handle with your own strength. You do this because you expect to get back more than you give.
Without story books is like a person with no soul.
Do not believe a thing because you have read about it in a book. Do not believe a thing because another man has said it was true. Do not believe in words because they are hallowed by tradition. Find out the truth for yourself. Reason it out. That is realization.
True religion comes not front the teaching of men or the reading of books; it is the awakening of the spirit within us, consequent upon pure and heroic action.
Books are only made so that they may point the way to a higher life; but no good results unless the path is trodden with unflinching steps!
Books cannot teach God, but they can destroy ignorance; their action is negative.
We read many books, but that does not bring us knowledge. We may read all the Bibles in the world, but that will not give us religion. Theoretical religion is easy enough to get, any one may get that. What we want is practical religion.
I hate this world, this dream, this horrible nightmare, with its churches and chicaneries, its books and blackguardisms, its fair faces and false hearts, its howling righteousness on the surface and utter hollowness beneath and, above all, its sanctified shopkeeping!
The book one must read to learn natural sciences is the book of nature. The book from which to learn religion is your own mind and heart.
Knowledge of the Absolute depends upon no book, nor upon anything; it is absolute in itself. No amount of study will give this knowledge; is not theory, it is realization. Cleanse the dust from the mirror, purify your own mind, and in a flash you know that you are Brahman.
Books never make religions, but religions make books. We must not forget that. No book ever created God, but God inspired all the great books. And no book ever created a soul.
Even books are nurses, medicines are nurses. But we must work to bring about the time when man shall recognise his mastery over his own body. Herbs and medicines have power over us as long as we allow them; when we become strong, these external methods are no more necessary.
Get away from all books and forms and let your soul see its Self. “We are deluded and maddened by books”, Shri Krishna declares.
He whose book of the heart has been opened needs no other books.
I do not call it religion so long as it is confined to books and dogmas.