Great Book Quotes - Page 7

• Life is very full of sex, or should be. As much as I admire Tolkien - and I do, he was a giant of fantasy and a giant of literature, and I think he wrote a great book that will be read for many years - you do have to wonder where all those Hobbits came from, since you can't imagine Hobbits having sex, can you? Well, sex is an important part of who we are. It drives us, it motivates us, it makes us do sometimes very noble things and it makes us do sometimes incredibly stupid things. Leave it out, and you've got an incomplete world.

  George R. R. Martin

  Sex, Stupid, Book

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• America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness, which are derived from Holy Scripture. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a very simple thing to ask of you. I ask of every man and woman in this audience that, from this night on, they will realize that part of the destiny of America lies in their daily perusal of this great Book of revelations. (The Bible) That if they would see America free and pure they will make their own spirits free and pure by the baptism of Holy Scripture.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Christian, Lying, Book

  Woodrow Wilson, Ray Stannard Baker, Howard Seavoy Leach (1925). “The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson: College and state; educational literary and political papers (1875-1913)”

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• Everybody's idea of a great book is different, of course. For me it's one that makes my jaw drop on every page, the writing is so original.

  Carl Hiaasen

  Book, Writing, Ideas

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• The world has progressed to the point where it's most powerful force is public opinion. And I believe that in this world it is not the great book or epic play, as once was the case, that will shape that opinion, but those who understand mass media and the techniques of mass persuasion...We must not just believe in what we sell. We must sell what we believe in. And we must pour a vast energy into those causes.

  William Bernbach

  Powerful, Believe, Book

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• In the circle where I was raised, I knew of no one knowledgeable in the visual arts, no one who regularly attended musical performances, and only two adults other than my teachers who spoke without embarrassment of poetry and literature — both of these being women. As far as I can recall, I never heard a man refer to a good or a great book. I knew no one who had mastered, or even studied, another language from choice. And our articulate, conscious life proceeded without acknowledgement of the preceding civilisations which had produced it.

  Shirley Hazzard

  Teacher, Art, Book

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• I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss.

  Michael Cunningham

  Book, Kissing, First Kiss

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• Go APE: Author a great book, Publish it quickly, and Entrepreneur your way to success. Self-publishing isn’t easy, but it’s fun and sometimes even lucrative. Plus, your book could change the world.

  Guy Kawasaki

  Fun, Book, Self

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• Everything comes from the great book of nature.

  Antonio Gaudi

  Book

  "Antonio Gaudí". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 1984.

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• The tendency of modern scientific teaching is to neglect the great books, to lay far too much stress upon relatively unimportant modern work, and to present masses of detail of doubtful truth and questionable weight in such a way as to obscure principles.

  Ronald Fisher

  Stress, Book, Teaching

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• Bicycling beyond the Divide did what all great books do: it told me about me. In its tale of a journey made by two different men-both of them Daryl Farmer-this book offers us not only moving vistas and meaningful people, but also hope, that rarest of literary commodities these days. I didn't want this to end.

  Bret Lott

  Meaningful, Moving, Book

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• Students learn best not by reading the Great Books in a closed room but by opening the doors and windows of experience.

  Thomas Ehrlich

  Book, Reading, Doors

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• A great thing is a great book; but a greater thing than all is the talk of a great man.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Book, Men, Great Things

  Benjamin Disraeli, Edmund Gosse, Robert Arnot (1904). “The works of Benjamin Disraeli, earl of Beaconsfield: embracing novels, romances, plays, poems, biography, short stories and great speeches”

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• Never let a day pass without looking at some perfect work of art, hearing some great piece of music and reading, in part, some great book.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Book, Reading

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• Wisdom is not what comes from reading great books. When it comes to understanding life, experiential learning is the only worthwhile kind, everything else is hearsay.

  Joan Erikson

  Book, Reading, Understanding

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• Why do you read many books? The great book is within your heart. Open the pages of this inexhaustible book, the source of all knowledge. You will know everything.

  Sivananda

  Book, Heart, Pages

  Swami Sivananda (1964). “Bliss Divine: A Book of Spiritual Essays on the Lofty Purpose of Human Life and the Means to Its Achievement”

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• Great books conserve time.

  Holbrook Jackson

  Book, Writing

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• All great books contain boring portions, and all great lives have contained uninteresting stretches.

  Bertrand Russell

  Book, Greatness, Boring

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.34, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I spent my first two years at a small all-male college in Virginia called Hampden-Sydney. That was like going to college 120 years ago. The languages, a year of rhetoric, all of the great books, Western Man courses, stuff like that.

  Stephen Colbert

  Book, College, Men

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. January 25, 2006.

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• I've heard people, usually writers, say that no one wrote a great book after winning the Booker, but I honestly did not feel any big pressure. The Gathering did hang over me in that it was darker than I thought at the time.

  Anne Enright

  Book, Winning, People

  "Anne Enright: 'I was always on the side. Like a salad'". Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2011.

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• Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe. Remarking on the complexity of Ptolemaic model of the universe after it was explained to him. Footnote: Carlyle says, in his History of Frederick the Great, book ii. chap. vii. that this saying of Alphonso about Ptolemy's astronomy, 'that it seemed a crank machine; that it was pity the Creator had not taken advice,' is still remembered by mankind, - this and no other of his many sayings.

  Alfonso X of Castile

  Book, Taken, Science

  Said after studying the Ptolemaic system (attributed)

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• Book love is something like romantic love. When we are reading a really great book, burdens feel lighter, cares seem smaller, and commonplaces are suddenly delightful. You become your best optimistic self. Like romantic love, book love fills you with a certain warmth and completeness. The world holds promise.

  Steve Leveen

  Book, Reading, Optimistic

  Steve Leveen (2005). “The Little Guide to Your Well-read Life”

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• Virginia Woolf's great novel, 'Mrs. Dalloway,' is the first great book I ever read. I read it almost by accident when I was in high school, when I was 15 years old.

  Michael Cunningham

  Book, School, Virginia

  "The Pulitzer for Fiction". "PBS NewsHour" with Elizabeth Farnsworth, www.pbs.org. April 19, 1999.

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• I think that the mark of a great book is that it will meet you wherever you're at and you'll feel and experience something new and different each time you read it.

  Josh Radnor

  Book, Thinking, Different

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time.

  William Landay

  Book, Writing, Ignored

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• If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.

  Katherine Paterson

  Art, Believe, Book

  Katherine Paterson (1981). “Gates of excellence: on reading and writing books for children”, Dutton Juvenile

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