Book Quotes

"Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven't asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go." Clay Christensen

That's a quote that gets me thinking.

"I don't think the reader should be indulged as a consumer, because he isn't one. Literature that indulges the tastes of the reader is a degraded literature. My goal is to disappoint the usual expectations and inspire new ones." Elena Ferrante

Definitely. Those are the best books.

"Reading is not a value in itself! Much more nonsense has been printed since Gutenberg than poor television has been able to broadcast in its 60 years of existence." Helmut Thoma, Austrian media manager

Also true, if you always read the same stuff, you are going nowhere.

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Book Quotes

"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones." Umberto Eco 

The man is so right.

"Books have a sense of honor. Once you've lent them, they never come back." Theodor Fontane 

Does that mean we shouldn't lend books? I love discussing books with others and often, the only way to do this is to lend them mine.

"I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil." Voltaire 

Some people should be made aware of that. But those are usually the ones who don't read in the first place and don't want to get people to get ideas or be smart. (And yes, I'm referring to a certain president who is proud to be dumb.)

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Book Quotes

"It is the artist's job to create sunshine when there is none." Romain Rolland, Nobel Prize in Literature 1915

And it always works, if we let them into our minds.

"Books have the power to make everything better, but it's hard to engage with that power if we've forgotten that reading is supposed to feel good, first and foremost." F. Scott Fitzgerald (Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby)

And no matter the subject of the book, if we enjoy it, it makes our lives a little better, page after page.

"Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind." Virginia Woolf

There is a German folk song "Thoughts are Free" (Die Gedanken sind frei). It's really old but it still matters. A lot.

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Book Quotes

Some political quotes I picked up lately and want to share. I guess, if you are Republican I have to warn you, this could wake you up.

"Seniors voted to gut Social Security.

Men voted for their wives and daughters to die from miscarriages.

Immigrants voted for deportation raids.

Poor people voted for tax cuts for billionaires.

Women voted to have fewer rights than men.

Police voted for a convicted felon."

@asclepiasyriaca

I don't understand people like that.

"Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future." Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter was one of the few intelligent American presidents.

"When you were asked to mask to save lives - you said no, my body, my rights.

When you were asked to vaccinate to save lives - you said no, my body, my rights.

When we demand strict gun laws to save lives - you said this is the land of the free.

But you want to decide what a woman does with her body."

Dr. Mursi, MD.

See my first comment.

And don't forget:
The richest 1% own almost half of the world's wealth, while the poorest half of the world own just 0.75%.

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Book Quotes

"The more languages you have, the more worlds you belong to." Marta Dzuirosz

So true. It goes with another quote that you get a new soul with every new language.

"Those who can read hold the key to great deeds, to undreamed-of possibilities." Aldous Huxley

Aren't we the lucky ones?

"Where do I find all the time not to read so much." Karl Kraus

I'd like the answer to that question.

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Book Quotes

Quotes about the all important history:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana.

(1863-1952), Spanish-American philosopher.

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce". Karl Marx

(1818-1883) German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist.

"Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it". Winston Churchill

(1874-1965) British statesman, military officer, and writer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Look at those dates! They knew it already and we still haven't learned. 😱

☮️☮️☮️

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Book Quotes

"From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings." Helen Hayes

True. Even if your parents are the smartest and most educated in the world, nobody knows everything. But we can learn so much from books that it will almost make us fly.

"If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them." George Orwell

Even truer. As we can always see when there have been elections.

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." Plato

Another true statement. Worst are those who think they know everything but really know nothing. They will shout loudest. And those who shout loudest are usually in the wrong.

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Book Quotes

    

"Books are flying carpets into the realm of fantasy." James Daniel

I like that allegory.

"If you are depressed you are living in the past if you are anxious you are living in the future, if you are at peace, you are living in the present." Lao Tzu

He was a smart guy. What was true then, many, many centuries ago, is still true today.

"Every book is a dialogue between author and reader." Ludwig Reiners

And I love talking to all those smart people from now and then.

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Book Quotes

    

"To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." Nicolaus Copernicus

I know that I know nothing. Another quote by a smart guy, Socrates. He was so right then as he is now.

"If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can’t be in books. The book needs you. " Gary Paulsen

That's a good point. I'm glad I can contribute to the meaning of existence for books.

"Too much of anything is bad, but too many books is barely enough." N.N.

Definitely true.

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Book Quotes

    

"Speak the truth in a million voices. It is silence that kills!" St. Catherine of Siena

It's always best to stick to the truth. Especially if you don't have a really great memory.

"In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact hat is true gives legitimacy to the entire work. That's the only difference, and it lies in the commitment of the writer. A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it." Gabriel García Márquez

Well, I have a problem with fiction that contradicts itself. If you are twenty and someone else is thirty at the same time, you better not be twenty-five and the other one is forty a couple of pages later.

"Book's are time travel. True readers all know this. But books don't just take you back to the time in which they were written; they can take you back to different versions of yourself." Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

That's the only time travel I believe in.

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Book Quotes

    

Unfortunately, Alice Munro passed away this week at the age of 92. She was a Nobel Prize winner and wrote some great books.

In order to commemorate her, here are some of her wonderful quotes.

"A story is not like a road to follow … it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you." Alice Munro (Selected stories)

Such a great allegory.

"Life would be grand if it weren't for the people."

I would agree for some part, it would be easier without some of the people but then there are the good ones ...

"The thing is to be happy, he said. No matter what. Just try that. You can. It gets to be easier and easier. It's nothing to do with circumstances. You wouldn't believe how good it is. Accept everything and then tragedy disappears. Or tragedy lightens, anyway, you're just there, going along easy in the world." Alice Munro  (Dear Life)

Not always easy but certainly worth a try.

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Book Quotes

   

"Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going." Rita Mae Brown

That's so true. Learn a language and you understand the people better who speak it.

"A drop of ink may make a million think." Lord Byron

In other words: The pen is mightier than the sword.

"Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over." Neil Gaiman

And such a great way to think about reality and learn how things can be done or should not be done.

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Book Quotes

  

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." Maya Angelou

That's a nice thought.

"I'm not interested in creating a book that is read once and then placed on the shelf and forgotten. I am very happy when people have worn out my books, or that they're held together by Scotch tape." Richard Scarry

Our books by Richard Scarry have been read over and over again by the boys. We all loved them. And he is so right, we should read books as much as possible. A well-loved book is one of the best friends you can have.

"If the world teaches me how to cry, reading teaches me how to shine" N.N.

Books have given me so much in life. I cannot thank them enough.

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Book Quotes

  

"She had read enough stories to know that the princess and the monster were never the same. She had been alone long enough to know which one she was." Melissa Bashardoust, Girl Serpent Thorn

I think I have read enough stories to know that the princess will always be saved from the monster by the good looking guy. 😉

"A book was a powerful thing. It could take her away from all her incessant worries for whole minutes at a time." Susan Wiggs, The Lost and Found Bookshop

Well said. So true.

"Paperbacks are for reading hardbacks for collecting" N.N.

Not a bad thought. But most of us don't have the space to collect all that many books, so I collect my paperbacks and only buy hardbacks very, very rarely.

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Book Quotes of the Week

 

"There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing." Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

I don't think I'd stay in a burning house to save my books but I know what he means.

"When we read with children, we increase their vocabulary and imagination, and with a larger vocabulary, they become better at expressing themselves with their own words. It strengthens their ability to enter into communities that benefit them both now and in the future." HKH Crown Princess Mary Elizabeth of Denmark

Totally, the more you read with children, the better their vocabulary, the better they are in school, the more successful they are in life. Lots of studies show that and we only have to look around to see it for ourselves.

"We do not read in order to turn great works of fiction into simplistic replicas of our own realities, we read for the pure, sensual, and unadulterated pleasure of reading." Azar Nafisi

True. But we gain so much more from it.

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Book Quotes of the Week

 

"My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

And books are great for that!!!

"Books, moonlight, melodrama." Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic

Not always melodrama, not always moonlight but definitely always books.

"Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up." Jane Yolen

I can imagine. I find myself more and more on the computer but I am sure I still write more by hand than many. And I still use my shorthand which is also a skill you have to preserve.

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Book Quotes of the Week

 

"A language is not just words. It's a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It's all embodied in a language." Noam Chomsky

Wise words, very wise ones. And every new language gives you a glimpse into that other culture, makes you part of a new community, gives you a new soul.

"I Love Books. I love that moment when you open one and sink into it you can escape from the world, into a story that's way more interesting than yours will ever be." Elizabeth Scott, Bloom

I think anyone reading this will second that. We all love books. And of course, the stories are way more interesting than our own because they are the stories from everywhere, from any time, there is always something more to your own story.

"In each book was a possibility of joy: a magical place to visit, a hero or heroine to meet, or a new friend to make." Janis Wildy, The English Bookshop

Again, books can give you so much. A lot of books can become your best friend, you can go to them again and again and find comfort in them.

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Book Quotes of the Week

 

"The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It's interesting that Goethe already thought that. And I read something similar by one of the great Greek writers, Plato or Sokrates or so. We all always believe that the next generation will be the end of civilization. But history has shown us that every generation has its ups and downs.

"For all my students
past, present, and future
May we all meet in heaven café
writing for eternity!"
Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

And all the readers, as well. Because otherwise, who would they be writing for?

"Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere." Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel knew what he was talking about. Let's hope that one day, everyone knows and will act accordingly.

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Book Quotes of the Week

  

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child." Marcus Tullius Cicero

That is a good thought. We will always have to learn everything again while we could learn so well from the mistakes made before us.

"The job of the linguist, like that of the biologist or the botanist, is not to tell us how nature should behave, or what its creations should look like, but to describe those creations in all their messy glory and try to figure out what they can teach us about life, the world, and, especially in the case of linguistics, the workings of the human mind." Arika Okrent, In the Land of Invented Languages

Definitely. We don't have to "believe" in science in order to experience it, it's there. And the same goes with language. It is growing and changing but it's also there as a tool to help us.

"People who say that I'm hard to shop for must not know where to buy books." N.N.

I have no idea who wrote this but he or she must know me pretty well. 😉

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Book Quotes of the Week

  

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history." Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Unfortunately, my compatriot is so right here.

"It's a great blessing if one can lose all sense of time, all worries, if only for a short time, in a book." Nell Last

Where would we be without books?

"People tell boring lies about politics, God, and love. You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?", Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

And the answer, I don't read, says just as much about a person.

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