Then I realize that words like "optimism" and "hope" which appear in all those self-help books that claim they'll make us more confident and better to cope with life, are just that: words.
The library would've cheered me up, most days. I loved the heavy oaken tables, the high walls stacked with books to the ceiling, the musty smell of old pages and the heavy brass fixtures that had gone dark with age and wear.
To Senor Sempere, the best friend a book could ever have: you opened the doors to the world for me and showed me how to go through them.
Upon being given a Bible, President Abraham Lincoln replied, "In regard to this Great book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man.
Fifty years from now if an understanding of man's origins, his evolution, his history, his progress is not in the common place of the school books we shall not exist.
You can almost always find chains of coincidence to disprove magic. That's because it doesn't happen the way it does in books. It makes those chains of coincidence. That's what it is.
For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.
One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has mo...
This book is dedicated to the people of America--strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched.
Many go to great lengths to discover God's will or to hear His voice, yet we only need to open His Book.
A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment.
A woman's destiny, they say, is not fulfilled until she holds in her arms her own little book.
One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore. "Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.
If you don’t laugh reading this book I’ll eat my pocket protector. Wait, did I just admit I had a pocket protector?
There are two answers to the things they will teach you about our land: the real answer and the answer you give in school to pass. You must read books and learn both answers.
Careless and not particularly biting, it was easier to shrug off than anything in the first book which depicted me as an inarticulate zombie confused by the irony of Randy Newman's "I Love L.A.
How above-the-law children's books are. Hansel and Gretel (littering, breaking and entering), Rumpelstiltskin (forced labor), Snow White (conspiracy to commit murder), Rapunzel (break of contract).
Let's chow, and then we'll get our books," Tony said. Just as the door was about to close behind us, he added, "You act like you've never had food before.
I got you a present." "Did you?" "It's a book of poetry--romancy stuff. I thought, 'How schmaltzy is that,' so it seemed like the thing. Then I screwed up and left it in my desk at work
It's not enough to know what all the words mean," he continued. "A good reader starts to see what an entire book is trying to say. And then a good reader will have something to say in return.
Each book is a mind alive, a life revealed, a world awaiting exploration, but living people are all those things, as well—and more, because their stories haven’t yet been completely told.
