Books
Christopher Morley on Imagination
“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.”
Leonard Bernstein on Inspiration
“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.”
Philip G. Hamerton on Quotations
“Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?”
Japanese Proverb about Reading
“If you believe everything you read, better not read.”
Seneca on Literature
“I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.”
George Bernard Shaw on Reading
“Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.”
Isadora Duncan on Experience
“What one has not experienced, one will never understand in print.”
Samuel Goldwyn on Writing
“I don’t think anyone should write their autobiography until after they’re dead.”
Sir Richard Steele on Reading
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”
Arnold Lobel on Books
“Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.”
Thomas Carlyle on Education
“What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.”
Jules Renard on Literature
“Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.”
Ronald Reagan on Politics
“Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.”
Jerry Seinfeld on Society
“A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.”
Samuel Johnson on Literature
“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”
Bertrand Russell on Books
“There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
Groucho Marx on Books
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
Paul Valery on Books
“Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.”
J. W. Eagan on Books and Movies
“Never judge a book by its movie.”
Groucho Marx on TV and Books
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
Robertson Davies on Books
“A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.”
Samuel Johnson on Writing
“Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.”