Famous Quotes & Sayings

Saint Augustine

In the usual course of study I had come to a book of a certain Cicero.

Saint Augustine

It’s not in the book or in the writer that readers discern the truth of what they read; they see it in themselves, if the light of truth has penetrated their minds.

Saint Augustine

For, as it is written in the book of the Prophets: 'And the angel that spoke in me, said to me...' He does not say, 'Spoke to me' but 'Spoke in me'...

Saint Augustine

Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build on the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all. Thus a man supported by faith, hope, and charity, with an unshaken hold upon them does not need the scriptures. . . And many live by these three things in solitude without books.

Saint Augustine

If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, 'The author of this book is mistaken'; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood.

Tori Amos

In order for my live performance to work, which is about generating a focused energy for about an hour and a half, it is necessary for me to listen and take in someone else's focused energy the day of or the day before the live show. That can transpire through a conversation, or inspiration can occur by looking through any type of visual book which sparks a narrative. That narrative then becomes today's seed and can then take root in music terms, where a sonic tree begins to grow.

Van Wyck Brooks

The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me, by newspapers and the Bible.

Van Wyck Brooks

No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead.

Van Wyck Brooks

No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.

Vance Havner

There is no devil in the first two chapters of the Bible and no devil in the last two chapters. Thank God for a book that disposes of the devil!

Valerie Bertinelli

Books make great gifts because... [they don't] come in any particular size, so you don't have to be embarrassed if you bought somebody the wrong size.

Upamanyu Chatterjee

I don't think I would do better books if I wrote full time. I write for amateurish reasons.

Upamanyu Chatterjee

I need to have some depth in my characters. That's why they are all Bengalis. I can't imagine writing a book with someone called Saxena as the hero.

Ulysses S. Grant

In politics I am growing indifferent - I would like it, if I could now return to my planting and books at home

Umberto Eco

My collection of rare books concerns only books that don't tell the truth.

Umberto Eco

There are more books in the world than hours in which to read them. We are thus deeply influenced by books we haven't read, that we haven't had the time to read.

Umberto Eco

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.

Umberto Eco

We stopped to browse in the cases, and now that William - with his new glasses on his nose - could linger and read the books, at every title he discovered he let out exclamations of happiness, either because he knew the work, or because he had been seeking it for a long time, or finally because he had never heard it mentioned and was highly excited and titillated. In short, for him every book was like a fabulous animal that he was meeting in a strange land.

Richard Dawkins

Words are our servants, not our masters. For different purposes, we find it convenient to use words in different senses.

Richard Dawkins

I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breathtaking inanity of the content.

Richard Dawkins

You contain a trillion copies of a large, textual document written in a highly accurate, digital code, each copy as voluminous as a substantial book. I'm talking, of course, of the DNA in your cells.

Roger Adams

Many thanks for the sending me the book Biology of the Striped Skunk ... Frankly, I doubt whether I shall read it or not, unless I happen to have some intimate contact with a skunk which may induce me to learn more about him.

Roger Angell

We are all writers and readers as well as communicators with the need at times to please and satisfy ourselves with the clear and almost perfect thought.

Robin Wasserman

I try not to think too much about an audience when Im writing the first draft of a book - at that stage, the prospect of anyone reading what Ive written would be enough to scare me into setting my laptop on fire.

Robin Williams

Do you get the feeling with Sarah Palin, in high school, she was voted least likely to write a book and most likely to burn one?

Robin Chase

There is a book yearning to come out of me: about how we can build the new collaboration economy, and the role of 'openness' in our quest for efficient use of resources and as a driver of innovation.

Robert Wilson Lynd

The happiness even of the naturalist depends in some measure upon his ignorance, which still leaves him new worlds of this kind to conquer. He may have reached the very Z of knowledge in the books, but he still feels half ignorant until he has confirmed each bright particular with his eyes.

Robert Reed

Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me, in terms of my development - an insight came from that book.

Robert Reed

2001: A Space Odyssey was a wonderful conundrum when I was a boy, with its giant concepts thrown across the giant screen at Indian Hills Theater. That movie woke me up in ways that I hadn't imagined, and I went searching for book versions of the same drug.

Robert Redford

I was producing things I was acting in, but I had never directed and I felt it was time. I was looking for a piece of material that was about behavior and feelings. When I read Judith Guest's book, I thought, This is it.

Robert Redford

What I would do is when I was younger I would draw in a sketch book something that happened in my life and then write a little something on the side about what happened or what the story.

Robert Nathan

It seems to me that I have always wanted to say the same things in my books: that life is one, that mystery is all around us, that yesterday, today and tomorrow are all spread out in the pattern of eternity, together, and that although love may wear many faces in the incomprehensible panorama of time, in the heart that loves it is always the same.

Robert Nozick

Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life experiences?...Of course, while in the tank you won't know that you're there; you'll think that it's all actually happening...Would you plug in?