Skip to main content

Book quotations

Back when I was blogging on my original 52 Books blog on Tblog I had, for a while, a feature called “quotation of the day”, where I would post daily quotations about books, reading or libraries. For some reason this feature didn’t follow me here, but now I’m resurrecting it. I’m not going to make it a daily or even a regular thing, but will try to post quotations on days when I don’t post anything else, if only to keep the feed readers busy.

I am widening the scope and including quotations from books that I have read that caught my attention for some reason, even if they are not about books, libraries or reading. I have, for some time, been collecting quotations from books into a commonplace book, and this is a perfect venue to unload some of the quotations.

Here is one I like:

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
Labels:

Comments

Dorte H said…
I agree: that is a good one :D

Once in a while I visit people who don´t own books, or at least don´t have any in their living-room, and it always strikes me as odd.

But the funny thing is that in this huge vicarage we have a library where we put most of our books, so we only have 6 shelves in the living room.
May 14, 2009 1:25 pm
Bibliophile said…
I would LOVE to have a library room of my very own, but you would still be able to finds books in every room in the house (even the bathroom).
May 14, 2009 1:32 pm
Dorte H said…
I didn´t say you couldn´t find books lying around the house, did I?
I just said we only have six shelves there which means that if we expect visitors the books are jammed in there, but as my wise son once said: reading matter is not clutter!

His rule has done a lot for my conscience :D
May 14, 2009 1:40 pm
Bibliophile said…
"Reading matter is not clutter"

I like it. Great motto for a reader, especially one like me who can never keep my books from migrating between rooms.
May 14, 2009 1:45 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more