Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a man.
Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.
What’s a book? Everything or nothing. The eye that sees it all.
I do not hesitate to read. all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable-any real insight or broad human sentiment.
Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.
History no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me by language and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have lived.
The book of nature is the book of fate. She turns the gigantic pages, leaf after leaf never returning one.
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
The virtue of books is to be readable.
In the great books of India, an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence, which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the questions that exercise us.
It is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in advance of the creative, so that there are competent judges of the best book, and few writers of the best books.
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.
Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is what it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in.
It is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany, or ornithology and astronomy by word of mouth from a companion than dully from a book.
The book written against fame and learning has the author’s name on the title-page.
Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.
I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.
Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.
We expect a great man to be a good reader.