
Top 100 Great Books Of Quotes
#1. 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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#2. Most great books have been about striving in some sense. In a sense, money is the great topic of the novel. You couldn't necessarily say that about poetry.
Chad Harbach
#3. Reading is one of life's great pleasures; talking about books keeps their worlds alive for longer.
Kate Morton
#4. She had a great respect for books herself, and she wished that she had read more. One could never read enough. Never.
Alexander McCall Smith
#5. Good books teach you about others;
great books teach you about yourself.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#6. The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths.
Stefan Zweig
#7. Every book is a great action and every great action is a book!
Martin Luther
#8. A great believer in precedent,' Della Street said. 'I think if he were ever confronted with a really novel situation he'd faint. He runs to his law books, digs around like a mole and finally comes up with case that's what he calls on all fours and was decided seventy-five or a hundred years ago.
Erle Stanley Gardner
#9. Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have not the time nor means to get more.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#10. There are some great, subversive female writers out there. Gender should not affect anything. It does, but it shouldn't.
Carla H. Krueger
#11. I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.
G.K. Chesterton
#12. My attraction to story is a ceaseless current that runs through the center of me. My inexhaustible ardor for reading seems connected to my hunger for storylines that show up in both books and in the great tumbling chaos of life.
Pat Conroy
#13. It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#14. There's a great deal of attention paid and books written about this change of life in a woman, and really very little written about a man's change of life.
Frank Langella
#15. This is what I believe is most important: getting good books into the hands of kids - books that will make them want to say, 'Wow, that was great. Give me another one to read.'
James Patterson
#16. Books are my art. The movie is someone else's art. But it's great marketing for books.
Barry Eisler
#17. The function of a great library is to store obscure books.
Nicholson Baker
#18. Students learn best not by reading the Great Books in a closed room but by opening the doors and windows of experience.
Thomas Ehrlich
#19. Great work doesn't make me jealous; it makes me want to work.
Glen Hirshberg
#20. Read the great books, gentlemen," Mr. Monte said one day. "Just the great ones. Ignore the others. There's not enough time.
Pat Conroy
#21. Stepping into the "shoes" of someone's life other than my own, great movies such as Cinema Paradiso, scenic landscapes, the work of Daniel Day-Lewis, the books of Joel Goldsmith, traveling, doughnuts, ice cream.
Reggie Lee
#22. In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.
Thomas Mann
#23. In the last month or so, i have read the great gatsby and a separate peace. i am starting to see a real trend in the kind of books bill gives me to read. and just like the tape of songs, it is amazing to hold each of them in the palm of my hand. they are all my favorites. all of them.
Stephen Chbosky
#24. The reading of great books has been a life-altering activity to me and, for better or worse, brought me singing and language-obsessed to that country where I make my living. Except for teaching, I've had no other ambition in life than to write books that mattered.
Pat Conroy
#25. Every 10 years you're a different person, and the really great books evolve with you as you get older. They're full of new rewards.
Martin Amis
#26. I've done a number of things based on real people or true stories or based on books, and I'm a great believer that you have to be true to the script.
Clive Owen
#27. Top 3 favorite books? I love finding really great children's books. My daughter was given "Pickle Chiffon Pie" which is so fantastic. We also love "Tacky the Penguin", and I love "Guji Guji" - all because they teach great life lessons without being teachy.
Abbie Schiller
#28. It is no more necessary that a man should remember the different dinners and suppers which have made him healthy, than the different books which have made him wise. Let us see the results of good food in a strong body, and the results of great reading in a full and powerful mind.
Sydney Smith
#29. One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.
George W. Bush
#30. Books are influential in proportion to their obscurity, provided that the obscurity be that of inexpressible Realities. The Bible is the most obscure book in the world. He must be a great fool who thinks he understands the plainest chapter of it.
Coventry Patmore
#31. Great books live longer than people.
They are gonna bury us all.
Patricia Nedelea
#32. My first three books, the collections, were fun to write and a great start but I have matured so much as a writer since then and am extremely proud of the Detective Byone novels- they will be my legacy!
Ricardo M. Fleshman
#33. I discovered that the wisdom of the world, and a great deal of its folly also, is to be found in the pages of books. And
C.S. Lewis
#34. A great deal has been written about personal power by Carlos Casteneda, and I find his first four books valuable. Of the experiences themselves, who knows? But the principles that are presented are quite valuable for one who seeks power.
Frederick Lenz
#35. In this job, there are some simple pleasures that really help you cope. One is books, I mean, books are a great escape. Books are a way to get your mind on something else.
George W. Bush
#36. The supper was like most Parisian suppers: silence at first, then a burst of unintelligible chatter, then witticisms that were mostly vapid, false rumors, bad reasonings, a little politics and a great deal of slander; they even spoke about new books.
Voltaire
#37. For the 'Rai-kirah' books, I began with the image of Aleksander riding the great wastelands, and that quickly morphed into the desert. Because I wanted my slave market cold and miserable, I chose to set the opening scene in the empire's summer capital in the mountains.
Carol Berg
#38. The hearts of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their eloquence.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#39. He spent his life immersed in books to the cost of everything else, even personal relationships. "Friends," he'd once said, "are probably great, but I have forty thousands friends of my own already, and each of them needs my attention.
Jasper Fforde
#40. It must be a really great book because one can read it as a boy in one way, and then re-read it in middle life and get something very different out of it - and that to my mind is one of the best tests.
C.S. Lewis
#41. Success is not measured by bestseller lists. Certain types of great books sell very well; other types of great books don't sell a lot. But they're both great.
Po Bronson
#42. There are countless books written on self-defense. Not all are non- sensical, but many are. Nathaniel Cooke has clearly thought a great deal about the subject and distilled its essence in a way that is wholly admirable.
Robert Twigger
#43. In great thick dusty books he read
And hardly ever went to bed
Before it was eleven.
- One Day When They Had Settled Down
Mervyn Peake
#44. In all the books love is one of the great facts that mould human life. But it is a catastrophe: it happens suddenly and overwhelmingly, and there is little to be said about it.
Virginia Woolf
#45. This is natural: one must read Herodotus's book-and every great book-repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images, and meanings. For within every great book there are several others.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
#46. The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions. On the other hand, but more slowly, life has thrown light for me on the meaning of books.
Marguerite Yourcenar
#47. ... but for now it's too great a pleasure to stay in my own cottage, with my own books, and do exactly what I want to do.
Melinda Salisbury
#48. We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.
Patti Smith
#49. I am madness maddened when it comes to books, writers, and the great granary silos where their wits are stored.
Ray Bradbury
#50. As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.
William H Gass
#51. I'd always been a big reader, and I loved books, and I always thought writing would be a great way to get by in the world.
Donald Ray Pollock
#52. Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die.
Francois Truffaut
#53. Personal tranquility consists in the orderly structuring of the mind, which occurs whenever a person engages in the exquisite practice of contemplating personal experiences, harmonizing time spent with other people, reading great books, and working on self-improvement.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#54. You're getting to know who the great chefs are through their books.
Thomas Keller
#55. Go out and find a copy of 'The Shrinking Of Treehorn' and its sequel, 'Treehorn's Treasure.' Written by Florence Parry Heide and illustrated by the great Edward Gorey, master of the gothic and the macabre, these books are small masterpieces.
Chris Riddell
#56. The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine - but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.
Joseph Joubert
#57. Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books.
George Gurdjieff
#58. I write titles that are confrontational. I write titles that make people want to pick up a book and find out more about it. I write good books; I write great titles though.
Larry Winget
#59. Some books are lies frae end to end,
And some great lies were never penn'd ...
Robert Burns
#60. I've seen so many photographers rush to do books the minute they start shooting, but one great thing about photography is that the images don't go away, so the more I sit with these images, the more I learn which ones have had the most impact.
Lynsey Addario
#62. Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say that I had a few extraordinary English teachers in high school whom I still credit for their guidance.
Julia Glass
#63. There are great books in this world and great worlds in books.
Anne Bronte
#64. Every true novelist listens for that suprapersonal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. Novelists who are more intelligent than their books should go into another line of work.
Milan Kundera
#65. the best of Cervantes is untranslatable, and this undeniable fact is in itself an incentive [for one and all] to learn Spanish.
Aubrey F.G. Bell
#66. Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!
Neil Gaiman
#67. I've been around so long that I might be in record books for being the longest, weirdest, most pathetic great player ever. Look t how precocious I am at 33.
Vince Spadea
#68. No matter how much a man may study, reflect and meditate on all the books in the world, he is nothing more than a minor scribe unless he has read the great book.
Denis Diderot
#69. Great books give you a feeling that you miss all day, until you finally get to crawl back inside those pages again.
Kathryn Stockett
#70. Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
Harold Bloom
#71. It takes great courage to write great books. Find your courage and find your voice.
Kristen Lamb
#72. The fear of failure is so great, it is no wonder that the desire to do right by one's children has led to a whole library of books offering advice on how to raise them.
Bruno Bettelheim
#73. I have been very interested in the number of kids who have read the Sherlock Holmes books after reading the Mary Russell books. That's great. That's more or less how I rediscovered the Holmes books.
Laurie R. King
#74. It holds my essential stuff, including a book - for true contentment, one must carry a book at all times, and great books so rarely fit, my friends, into one's pocket[ ... ]
Michael Chabon
#75. Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's creepy as hell.
Max Barry
#76. The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing.
Isabel Allende
#77. Wisdom is not what comes from reading great books. When it comes to understanding life, experiential learning is the only worthwhile kind, everything else is hearsay.
Joan Erikson
#78. There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things, and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity.
Michel De Montaigne
#79. Most of the books that I've adapted I'm doing because I love the book and I feel like it's a great work of art in itself, and when it's a great book I feel as a director or a writer that I have a responsibility to rise to the level of the original. It makes me try to reach higher.
James Franco
#80. Carnegie Hall is as good as they say it is. It's not like Stonehenge which looks great in books but then you go there and it's a pile of rocks next to a highway. There's actually a highway right next to it, but you don't see that in pictures.
Bill Burr
#81. Let us read thoughtfully; this is a great secret in the right use of books.
George Gilfillan
#82. There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea things open, and Utterson was amazed to find it a copy of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in his own hand with startling blasphemies. Next,
Robert Louis Stevenson
#83. On a practical level, poetry isn't something anybody has really made a great living at. I might sell some books and, once in a while, someone might pay to hear me read.
Viggo Mortensen
#84. They do you a great honor. In Krasia, if no one is trying to kill you, it is because you're not worth killing.
Peter Brett
#85. Great books, if long enough and full of topical description and contemporary comment, were now coming into even wider public favor. The lengthier and fuller of comment, the better.
James Purdy
#86. Why do you read many books? The great book is within your heart. Open the pages of this inexhaustible book, the source of all knowledge. You will know everything.
Sivananda
#87. To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books.
Dan Brown
#88. There are two of my favorite books, 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Gone With The Wind', that were made into movies. And I love those movies as much as I love the books. That's really rare.
Tatiana De Rosnay
#89. The worst part of writing is meeting all these great new characters and having no one to talk about (the adventures you share with) them.
Claudia Bakker
#90. There were two sets of double doors leading out of the antechamber, one marked STACKS and the other TOMES. Not knowing the difference between the two, I headed to the ones labeled STACKS. That was what I wanted. Stacks of books. Great heaps of books. Shelf after endless shelf of books.
Patrick Rothfuss
#92. All of my sermons become books. I've been accused of having no unpublished thought. I encourage pastors to do that. I think there are so many great sermons that never really get circulation.
Max Lucado
#93. Books were expensive, as well. But she'd read enough of them to know that they were only as valuable as the contents of their writers' minds - and to her it seemed that a great many writers, had they been merchants, would have precious little inventory.
Jim Butcher
#94. There are several GREAT places to buy books while visiting in Cherry Hill Pennsylvania
Ida Mingle
#95. I get a glimpse of the mind of many souls from their sacred books.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#96. I don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had any interest in doing a book just to write the life of a great man. I had zero interest in that. My interest is in power. How power works.
Robert Caro
#97. Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea They thought great thoughts about liberty Poets wrote down words that did fit Writers wrote books Thinkers thought about it.
Van Morrison
#98. Reading a book is like going on a great journey. You don't know what'll happen, but something is bound to change. And for me, that change has always been good.
Shannon Hale
#99. The homes I like the best are totally occupied, busy, and useful, whether it's a tiny little house or a great big one. Rarely do you find a great big house that's used in a good way. So I prefer smaller spaces that are full of books, full of things that people are doing.
Martha Stewart
#100. We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.
Dick Gregory
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