Books

It is a curious mania (book collecting) instantly understood by every other collector and almost incomprehensible to the uncontaminated.

Louis Auchincloss, A Writer's Capital

God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead.

James Baldwin, The Book-Lover

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead.

Clarence S. Day, The Story of the Yale University Press Told by a Friend

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.

Charles Eliot, "The Happy Life," The Durable Satisfactions of Life

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

A. Whitney Griswold, "A Little Learning," The Atlantic Monthly

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstacy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.

Ernest Hemingway, "Old Newsman Writes," Esquire, Dec 1934

Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors.

John F. Kennedy, Saturday Review, 29 Oct 1960

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

George Bernard Shaw

this site contains no flash. no ads. no animation. no frames.