Look, history is interesting. I read three books on George Washington last year. And my opinion is that if they're still analyzing the first president, the 43rd president ought to be doing what he thinks is right. And eventually, historians will come and realize whether... the decisions I made made sense.
As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No ... eight days a week.
If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.
The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder.
The approach to the offices of Girdlestone and Co. was not a very dignified one, nor would the uninitiated who traversed it form any conception of the commercial prosperity of the firm in question.
The aphorism, the apothegm, in which I am the first among the Germans to be a master, are the forms of “eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book — what everyone else does not say in a book.
I have the same fantasy every time I read a book I love, no matter who wrote it, no matter when it was written. That the author has written his book only for me.
A reader is doubly guilty of bad manners against an author when he praises his second book at the expense of his first (or vice versa) and then expects the author to be grateful for what he has done.
Walden - all his books, indeed - are packed with subtle, conflicting, and very fruitful discoveries. They are not written to prove something in the end. They are written as the Indians turn down twigs to mark their path through the forest. He cuts his way through life as if no one had ever taken that road before, leaving these signs for those who come after, should they care to see which way he went.
People say strange things, the boy thought. Sometimes it's better to be with the sheep, who don't say anything. And better still to be alone with one's books. They tell their incredible stories at the time when you want to hear them. But when you're talking to people, they say some things that are so strange that you don't know how to continue the conversation.
It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.
SCRAP-BOOK, n. A book that is commonly edited by a fool. Many persons of some small distinction compile scrap-books containing whatever they happen to read about themselves or employ others to collect.
I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it?