Sharon Beers > Sharon's Quotes

“I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.”
― Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying

“And that's all we are Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood. until we - each of us, individually- decide to become something else. I am still that piece of drifting wood, and those out there are no better. But you can be better. ”
― Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying

“I have no more to say except this: We must live with our own conscience.”
― Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“Everything's been said, but it needs saying again.”
― Ernest J. Gaines, Conversations with Ernest Gaines

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
― Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
― Voltaire

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.”
― Joyce Carol Oates

“The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”
― Joseph Joubert

“A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.”
― Margaret Fuller

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”
― Bill Keane

“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;
Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it;
Who has left the world better than he found it,
Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;
Whose life was an inspiration;
Whose memory a benediction.”
― Bessie Anderson Stanley, More Heart Throbs Volume Two in Prose and Verse Dear to the American People And by them contributed as a Supplement to the original $10,000 Prize Book HEART THROBS

“Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech.”
― William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”
― Albert Einstein

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
― Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
― Cicero

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates