My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.
There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
When you make friends with a long-dead philosopher, you don’t think of them in a detached, objective manner. That is, we better understand where they are coming from, and why they hold certain views.
I am heir of all the ages - heir of their wealth of thought and high endeavor.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root...
The heights by great men reached and kept, Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.
...The moral tide of society is seldom altered by grand institutions, such as governments, religions and economic systems. Those things are too unwieldy and too wedded to the status quo. Great moral change is usually brought about by the vibrant voice of a visionary...And more often than not, that one visionary person will be carrying a pen, or a movie camera, or a microphone.
I have met enough people I don't like in my life to have a fairly shrewd idea of what I want my baddies to be like.
The great books beckon us to a road upward.
Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat. I don't much care where - said Alice. Then it doesn't matter which way you go, said the Cat. -so long as I get somewhere, Alice added as an explanation. Oh, you're sure to do that, said the Cat, if you only walk long enough.
Do you ever wonder what makes a great book great? To begin with, great books offer a higher level of language, characterization, and insight than average books, along with a quality of timelessness that makes them relevant to readers in any age...A great book is designed to change your mind, touch your heart, and lift your spirit. You should emerge from the experience of reading with some new wisdom about the human condition and a deeper perspective about the experiences of your own life.
Serious reading is not a passive activity; it is more like hiking or running, and it is rewarding in the same way. Harold Bloom calls it a "difficult pleasure." As with a long run or a challenging hike, one has to invest a lot of effort in a great book. The vocabulary may be unfamiliar, the imagery confusing, and the length of the book may call for a large commitment of time. Such a book asks a lot of you, but offers in return the same thrill you feel when you reach the top of the mountain or finish that marathon. The “high” one experiences after a great read is comparable to the “high” one experiences after a great run. It’s worth the effort!
Every great book changes your life in some way, and a lifetime of reading great books can alter the course of your life.
A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.
Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.
These books ain't window dressing. I think Machiavelli's the most sophisticated writer outside of Shakespeare. Way ahead of his time. Such a manipulative person. Everything he accomplished he did by kissin' ass.
I like the hip writers: Fitzgerald, the guy who committed suicide, Hemingway, all those guys. Some of them were alcoholics and drug addicts but they had fun. They were real people. They formed the culture of American literature. Hemingway admired Tolstoy, Tolstoy admired Pushkin, and Mailer admired Hemingway. It all flows down. The greats are all connected. One day I'm gonna write a book myself. The first chapter will be about what a rough deal my momma got. She believed in you guys and your society.
Shyamalan wrote some dialogue for a birthday party - a turning point, though it never made it to the screen - where the sensitive kid and a chubby kid are just sitting there, friendless and ostracized. The sensitive kid tells the chubby kid, "My mom said God made some of us different, knowing that it'd be hard. But he picked the people who would be different really carefully." Then the sensitive kid leans forward to the chubby kid: "God thinks we’re strong."... "I was only 10," says Haley Joel Osment, "but I could tell it was amazing writing."...I ask why Manoj ever stopped calling himself Manoj. "You are pronouncing it so well," his mother says, sweetly. (It’s Ma-noge.) She says that Shyamalan's teachers used to mangle it, so when he was a teenager he came up with Night. His father tells me that his son always felt a kinship with the Native Americans, and that the word resonated for them because the elders told their children stories around the fire in the evening and because you can see the universe only at night.
The fault was mine. The page of life that was spread out before me seemed dull and commonplace, only because I had not fathomed its deeper import.
Stories should be told for a reason...If you dispense your own wisdom, others often dismiss it. If you offer wisdom from a third party it seems less arrogant and more acceptable.
Our doubts are traitors and make us loose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt. Measure for Measure ActI.Sc.5
Strong reasons make strong actions.
He is well paid That is well satisfied.
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say.
It is with books as with the fire in our hearths; we go to a neighbor to get the embers and light it when we return home, pass it on to others, and it belongs to everyone.
Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable.
Books, like conversation, rarely give us any precise ideas: nothing is so common as to read and converse unprofitably. We must here repeat what Locke has so strongly urged—Define your terms.
Define your terms, you will permit me again to say, or we shall never understand one another.
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.
The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known.
Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
The covers of this book are too far apart.
But he that dare not grasp the thorn Should never crave the rose.
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.
Readers are plentiful, thinkers are rare.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
Happy are those who dream dreams, and are willing to pay the price to make them reality.
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts; but so to love wisdom as to live by its dictates.
The worth of a book is what you can carry away from it.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
I have read your book and much like it.
All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.
To thine ownself be true then canst thou be false to any man.
We must not stint our necessary actions, in the fear to cope malicious censurers. Henry VIII ACT 1 SC.2
When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again. King Lear Act II Sc. 1
An old man is twice a child. Hamlet Act II Sc.2
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!
Take all the swift advantage of the hours.
I am at war twixt will and will not.
There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in misery.
Lawless are they that maketh their wills their law.
Tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content,Than to be perk'd up in a glittering grief, And wear a golden sorrow. Henry VIII Act II Sc. 3
He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
I feel within me A peace above all earthly dignities A still and quiet conscience.
God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.
Everyone can master a grief but he that has it.
Death lies on her, like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field. Romeo and Juliet. Act 1V Sc. 5
All that glitters is not gold. Merchant of Venice ActII. Sc.7
Modest doubt is call'd The Beacon of the wise.
O, cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint, With saints dost bait thy hook! Measure for Measure ActII Sc.4
Violent fires soon burn out themselves; Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short. Richard II Act. II Sc. 1
How far your eyes may pierce, I cannot tell; Striving to better, oft we mar what's well. King Lear Act I. Sc. 4
You have such a February face, So full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness.
He lives in fame that died in virtues cause.
Go to your bosom; knock there; and ask your heart what it doth know. Measure for Measure Act II Sc. 2
They say, best men are molded out of faults; And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad: so may my husband. Measure for Measure Act V Sc. 1
Was ever feather so lightly blown to and fro, as tis multitude? Henry VI Act. IV sc. 8
THIRD FISHERMAN: Master I marvel how the fishes live in the sea. FIRST FISHERMAN: Why, as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones. Pericles Act II Sc. 1
The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.
Have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest.
This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.
Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibers.
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.
Habit rules the unreflecting herd.
My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.
Missing Reference