Izi > Izi's Quotes

“Good books are as friends, willing to give to us if we are willing to make a little effort.”
― Gordon B. Hinckley

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.”
― Christopher Morley, Pipefuls

“Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of a good book.”
― Charles Caleb Colton

“There are 10,000 books in my library, and it will keep growing until I die. This has exasperated my daughters, amused my friends and baffled my accountant. If I had not picked up this habit in the library long ago, I would have more money in the bank today; I would not be richer.”
― Pete Hamill

“I believe that a good children's book should appeal to all people who have not completely lost their original joy and wonder in life. The fact is that I don't make books for children at all. I make them for that part of us, of myself and of my friends, which has never changed, which is still a child.”
― Leo Lionni

“...a book is a delicate friend, a white bird, an exquisite being, afraid of water.

Darling things! Afraid of water, of fire, They shiver in the wind. Clumsy, crude human fingers leave bruises on them that'll never fade! Never!

Some people touch books without washing their hands!

Some underline things in ink!

Some even tear pages out! ”
― Tatyana Tolstaya, The Slynx

“He that loves a book will never want a [close] friend,
a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter.
By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently
divert and pleasantly entertain himself,
as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.”
― Isaac Barrow

“The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.”
― William Dean Howells

“A blessed companion is a book--a book that, fitly chosen, is a lifelong friend...a book that, at a touch, pours its heart into your own.”
― Douglas Jerrold

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that
without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”
― Pearl S. Buck

“A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts.”
― Axel Munthe

“It is both relaxing and invigorating to occasionally set aside the worries of life, seek the company of a friendly book...from the reading of 'good books' there comes a richness of life that can be obtained in no other way.”
― Gordon B. Hinckley

“I often feel sorry for people who don't read good books; they are missing a chance to lead an extra life.”
― Scott Corbett

“My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“I think the only way to get through this life is laughing hard and constantly, mostly at myself.”
― Shannon Hale

“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. - Mrs. Whatsit”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“Like and equal are not the same thing at all.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“I was under the stars, like a fish is under water.”
― Shannon Hale

“Step follows step,
Hope follows Courage,
Set your face towards danger,
Set your heart on victory.”
― Gail Carson Levine, The Two Princesses of Bamarre

“If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“Fairy tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

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

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

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West