"Books that are books are all that..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau
Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.
More by Henry David Thoreau
“I stand in awe of my body.”
“Most men cry better than they speak. You get more nurture out of them by pinching than addressing them.”
“It seemed to me that man himself was like a half-emptied bottle of pale ale, which Time had drunk so far, yet stoppled tight for a while, and drifting about in the ocean of circumstances, but destined ere-long to mingle with the surrounding waves, or be spilled amid the sands of a distant shore.”
More on Books
“When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but to a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. I think of the books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a countryish teen-aged boy finding them, and having them speak to him. The review, the stacks in Brentano's, are just hurdles to get over, to place the books on that shelf.”
“I have my books and my poetry to protect me”
“I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book.”
More on Reading
“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
“Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a man.”
“[Among the books he chooses, a statesman] ought to read interesting books on history and government, and books of science and philosophy; and really good books on these subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever written in prose or verse.”