Reality has become much scarier than any, even tasteless, imagination. And it should be shown that way. The human soul is measured to its full extent, and such that the world did not even suspect. Books and films about our truth, about our people must crackle with horror, suffering, anger and the unheard-of power of the human spirit.
Cruelty and universal stupidity, dressing in atavistic feathers, glorified by millennia of bookish lies and bloodthirsty stupidity, turn me into something worse, stupider and more terrible than a wild beast. I am not talking about such noble and respectable animals as a dog, horse or cow.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Mind did not come from books, but books came from mind.
— Hryhoriy Skovoroda
If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on… then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me.
—Immanuel Kant
The Bible has a way of putting more in a single sentence than other writers can put in a whole book. Yet there are some who would tell us that the Bible is no more God’s book than other books. Either they have not read the Bible, or they have read it with their eyes closed.
—R. A. Torrey
The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.
“I commend to you the study of instructive books, but above all I commend the study of Christ. Let him be your library.”
God has condescended to touch our hearts…by the wonderful variety and beauty of his Book.
—J. Gresham Machen
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
—George Orwell
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
—George Orwell
It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.
—Voltaire
The best books.. are those that tell you what you know already.
—George Orwell
Books are a narcotic.
—Franz Kafka
“No man who merely skims the book of God can profit from it.
We must dig and mine until we obtain hidden treasure.”
— Charles Spurgeon
But he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.
—John Milton
You can be intelligent without ever having read a book, but if you believe everything that’s written in books, you can’t help but be a fool.
—Leo Tolstoy
Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.
—Franz Kafka
′Classic′ – a book which people praise and don’t read.
—Mark Twain
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
—Franz Kafka
There are three things that grow more precious with age; old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to enjoy.
—Henry Ford
It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.
—Vincent Van Gogh
A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
—John Milton
I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.
—Jean-Paul Sartre
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.
—Franz Kafka
There is no friend as loyal as a book.
—Ernest Hemingway
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
—Charles Dickens
I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
—Henry David Thoreau
With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?
—Oscar Wilde
I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple
—Jean-Paul Sartre