Famous Quotes & Sayings

Holly Black

Librarians are hot. They have knowledge and power over their domain...It is no coincidence how many librarians are portrayed as having a passionate interior, hidden by a cool layer of reserve. Aren't books like that? On the shelf, their calm covers belie the intense experience of reading one. Reading inflames the soul. Now, what sort of person would be the keeper of such books?

Herman Wouk

I think it's a bit like coming to the end of a book. The plot's in its thickest, all the characters are in a mess, but you can see that there aren't fifty pages left, and you know that the finish can't be far off.

Herman Wouk

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.

Hermann Hesse

There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.

Hermann Hesse

The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.

Hermann Hesse

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

Hermann Hesse

"For even the most childish intoxication with progress will soon be forced to recognize that writing and books have a function that is eternal. It will become evident that formulations in words and the handling on of these formulations through writing are not only important aids but actually the only means by which humanity can have a history and continuing consciousness of itself."

Hermann Hesse

All the books of the world full of thoughts and poems are nothing in comparison to a minute of sobbing, when feeling surges in waves, the soul feels itself profoundly and finds itself. Tears are the melting ice of snow. All angels are close to the crying person.

Hermann Hesse

The day had gone by just as days go by. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life.

Henry Vaughan

As great a store Have we of books as bees of herbs or more.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I know not how it is, but during a voyage I collect books as a ship does barnacles.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Books are sepulchres of thought.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The pleasant books, that silently among Our household treasures take familiar places, And are to us as if a living tongue Spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Time has a doomsday book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never to be effaced.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My Book and Heart Shall never part.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is true, that it is not at all necessary to love many books, in order to love them much.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings - as some savage tribes determine the power of muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser.

Henrik Ibsen

I believe that before anything else I'm a human being -- just as much as you are... or at any rate I shall try to become one. I know quite well that most people would agree with you, Torvald, and that you have warrant for it in books; but I can't be satisfied any longer with what most people say, and with what's in books. I must think things out for myself and try to understand them.

Henrik Ibsen

...I'm no longer prepared to accept what people say and what's written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.

Henri Nouwen

People have filled an enormously important role in my life - more than books! For me, it's not the formal advising or the therapy that meant so much. It was more the fact that someone committed himself or herself to me. They were really interested in my life; they wanted to know what I was doing; they followed me; they dared to confront and challenge me.

Heidi Julavits

If I'd done the discovery before I wrote the book, then there would be nothing to discover. It would feel dutiful instead of exciting.

Heidi Julavits

I calmed myself by walking into my nearby bookstore and marveling at all the books other people had written. So many people had finished and published novels; it couldn’t be so hard, right?

Hayley Williams

Whether I'm being influenced by new music that I'm listening to, books I've read, my friends, or my faith, I'm learning all the time.

Hayley Mills

I cry in movies a lot, and over books.

Hattie McDaniel

In playing the part of Mammy, I tried to make her a living, breathing character, the way she appeared to me in the book

Between the villages of Aubiere and Romagnat in the ancient Province of Auvergne there is an old road that comes suddenly over the top of a high hill. To stand south of this ridge looking up at the highway flowing over the skyline is to receive one of those irrefutable impressions from landscape which requires more than a philosopher to explain. In this case it is undoubtedly, for some reason, one of exalted expectation.

Heston Blumenthal

At home I've got 1,500 cook books and the spines have all gone, the pages are all torn - it's chaos.

Hesketh Pearson

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.