The Quotable Book Lover - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1620876256 ISBN 13: 9781620876251

Publisher: Skyhorse, 2013

Synopsis

"Some books are unreservedly forgotten; none are unreservedly remembered."
-W. H. Auden

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
-Cicero

"The proper study of mankind is books."
-Aldous Huxley

This collection of more than five hundred quotations captures the wisdom and wit of the most insightful things ever said about books, spoken and written by such legendary figures as: Aeschylus, Ernest Hemingway, John Ruskin, Woody Allen, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Scribner, Maya Angelou, Franz Kafka, George Bernard Shaw, Jane Austen, Helen Keller, Wallace Stevens, Francis Bacon, Malcolm X, Robert Penn Warren, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Groucho Marx, William Carlos Williams, William Faulkner, John Milton, Oprah Winfrey, Robert Frost, George Orwell, and W. B. Yeats.

Encompassing the many facets of books and the pleasures and puzzlements they afford, The Quotable Book Lover includes chapters on writing, reading, and bookbinding, among other subjects.

With its wide range of commentary, this compilation will surely entertain and enlighten bibliophiles everywhere.

About this title

Review:

The bibliophiles of the world are an erudite and witty bunch, especially the hundreds of quotable sages and wags whose bons mots are collected in this tribute to the written word. The authors of these insights, spanning centuries and continents, include Aeschylus and Lady Bird Johnson, Gustave Flaubert and Francis Bacon, Russell Baker and Isadora Duncan, Katharine Hepburn and Mark Twain, Pablo Picasso and Brad Pitt.

The quotations offer witticisms as well as philosophical insights. Woody Allen quips, "I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It's about Russia." And Franz Kafka declares, "Books must be the axe to break the frozen sea inside me." Mark Twain reflects, "I like a thin book because it will steady a table, a leather volume because it will strop a razor, and a heavy book because it can be thrown at a cat." And Fran Lebowitz notes that "Magazines all too frequently lead to books, and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature." Aristotle observes that "To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man." H.L. Mencken explains, "I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved, which a cow enjoys on giving milk." And Thomas Mann opines that "A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

In all, there are more than 500 quotations that pithily consider every aspect of authors, readers, collectors, and books. Entertaining and provocative, it is the sort of book that makes you sit friends down and read them just one more entry. In one such entry, Robertson Davies observes that "There are many people--happy people, it usually appears--whose thoughts at Christmas always turn to books. The notion of a Christmas tree with no books under it is repugnant and unnatural to them." This is just the sort of book to make such people remarkably content. --Stephanie Gold

From the Back Cover:

This collection of more than five hundred quotations captures the wisdom and wit of the most insightful things ever said about books, spoken and written by such legendary figures as: Aeschylus, Ernest Hemingway, John Ruskin, Woody Allen, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Scribner, Maya Angelou, Franz Kafka, George Bernard Shaw, Jane Austen, Helen Keller, Wallace Stevens, Francis Bacon, Malcolm X, Robert Penn Warren, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Groucho Marx, William Carlos Williams, William Faulkner, John Milton, Oprah Winfrey, Robert Frost, George Orwell, W. B. Yeats.
With its wide range of commentary, this compilation will surely entertain and enlighten bibliophiles everywhere..

About this edition

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1620876256
• ISBN 13: 9781620876251
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Jacobs Ben, Hjalmarsson Helena