I am prepared to say only one twentieth of one percent of the American people reads books carefully. But that is one hundred thousand people. And that is all I ever ask for. Some people think that they must write for two hundred million Americans. This is a terrible mistake.
Books Quotes
Books are for the scholars’ idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must – we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps […]
Sincere books may sometimes have a certain salutary pungency. Personally I deplore… those sugary confections which readers swallow without realizing that they are quietly poisoning themselves. It had always been my belief that the novelist, like the traveller, enjoyed the liberty to describe what he saw. Following the example of many others, I could have […]
You won’t find the Alice books reprinted in Mortimer Adler’s set of “The Great Books of the Western World”, but I venture to state the following: It is permissible today to consider a person educated if he or she has not read, say “Das Capital” or books by Hegel and Freud, or indeed more than […]
The easiest books are generally the best; for whatever author is obscure and difficult in his own language, certainly does not think clearly.
To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.
Many thanks; I shall lose no time in reading your book.
A good novel tells us the truth about it’s hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
The people who are always monkeying with these great books to make them fully (comprehensible) have no friend in me, for in their realm the fully comprehensible is not worth comprehending.
Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners.
