"I have read your book, and I..." - Quote by Jane Austen

“There is something in the eloquence of the pulpit, when it is really eloquence, which is entitled to the highest praise and honour. The preacher who can touch and affect such an heterogeneous mass of hearers, on subjects limited, and long worn thread-bare in all common hands; who can say any thing new or striking, any thing that rouses the attention, without offending the taste, or wearing out the feelings of his hearers, is a man whom one could not (in his public capacity) honour enough.”

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

“Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees.”

“There's no reason to burn books if you don't read them.”

“Some of the sweetest hours in life, in retrospect will be found to have been spent with books.”

“Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission.”

“The newspaperman has become a walking plague. He spreads the contagion of lies and calumnies.”

“If you don't allow people to contribute, to offer their point of view, or to criticize what has been put before them, then they can never like you. And you can never build that instrument of collective leadership.”