Books Theodore Quotes & Sayings

Harriet, to hide her excitement, had turned to the bookshelves in the corner between the windows and the fireplace. The books, untidily arranged, some standing, some piled on their sides, with newspapers and magazines wedged among them, confused her. There were no sets and a great many were paper-backed. She saw friends - Mr. Dickens was present - and nodding acquaintances - Laurence Sterne, for instance, and Theodore Dreiser - but they were among strangers: Henry Miller, Norman Douglas, Saki, Ronald Firbank, strangers all. — Jack Iams

There are new eras in one's life that are equivalent to youth-are something better than youth. — George Eliot

Hope is not a prediction of the future, it's a declaration of what's possible. — Yogi Bhajan

What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts? — Theodore Roethke

We are to have no pictures which the puritan and the narrow, animated by an obsolete dogma, cannot approve of. We are to have no theaters no motion pictures, no books, no public exhibitions of any kind, no speech even which will anyway contravene his limited view of life. — Theodore Dreiser

The agency that is so strict on the way Americans keep their books cannot even pass a financial audit. — Theodore Stevens

I refused to have bookshelves, horrified that I'd feel compelled to organise the books in some regimented system - Dewey or alphabetical or worse - and so the books lived in stacks, some as tall as me, in the most subjective order I could invent.
Thus Nabokov lived between Gogol and Hemingway, cradled between the Old World and the New; Willa Cather and Theodore Dreiser and Thomas Hardy were stacked together not for their chronological proximity but because they all reminded me in some way of dryness (though in Dreiser's case I think I was focused mainly on his name): George Eliot and Jane Austen shared a stack with Thackeray because all I had of his was Vanity Fair, and I thought that Becky Sharp would do best in the presence of ladies (and deep down I worried that if I put her next to David Copperfield, she might seduce him). — Rebecca Makkai

The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most. — Theodore Parker

As ever, books remained a medium through which Theodore and Edith connected and interpreted larger world. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be. — Theodore Roosevelt

Books are all very well in their way, and we love them at Sagamore Hill; but children are better than books. — Theodore Roosevelt

Now and then I am asked as to "what books a statesman should read," and my answer is, poetry and novels - including short stories under the head of novels. I don't mean that he should read only novels and modern poetry. If he cannot also enjoy the Hebrew prophets and the Greek dramatists, he should be sorry. He 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. — Theodore Roosevelt

Evelyn said, "What's it called when a person needs a ... person ... when you want to be touched and the ... two are like one thing and there isn't anything else at all anywhere?"
Alicia, who had read books, thought about it. "Love," she said at length. She swallowed. "It's a madness. It's bad. — Theodore Sturgeon

During their subsequent meetings, which were soon and often, Lance confessed and anatomized his passion for her. He even gave her its (the passion's, of course) biography. It had been born of a book jacket, the one responsible for the only really nice thing ever said about Eloise Michaud in a metropolitan review - The photo-portrait on the book jacket will move as many books as, say, good writing might. To be honest, however, the picture is worth quite the price of the volume. Miss Michaud is the most scrumptious scrivener ever to set pen to the paper of a book-club contract. — Theodore Sturgeon

Fiction just makes it all more interesting. Truth is so boring. — Charlaine Harris

The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. A great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
1810-1860, Minister — Theodore Parker

The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books — Theodore Roosevelt

Rough board shelves hold a number of books, without which some of the evenings would be long indeed. — Theodore Roosevelt

I am rather more apt to read old books than new ones. — Theodore Roosevelt

Books are the ammunition of life. — Theodore Roosevelt

Heavy burdens are not for everyone, for some they are impossible ... These are my thoughts, if you need them so much. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Journalism is an immense power, that threatens soon to supersede sermons, lectures, and books. — Theodore Tilton

I have no sympathy whatever with writing lists of the One Hundred Best Books, or the Five-Foot Library. It is all right for a man to amuse himself by composing a list of a hundred very good books; and if he is to go off for a year or so where he cannot get many books, it is an excellent thing to choose a five-foot library of particular books which in that particular year and on that particular trip he would like to read. But there is no such thing as a hundred books that are best for all men, or for the majority of men, or for one man at all times; and there is no such thing as a five-foot library which will satisfy the needs of even one particular man on different occasions extending over a number of years. — Theodore Roosevelt

I am old-fashioned, or sentimental, or something, about books! Whenever I read one I want, in the first place, to enjoy myself, and, in the next place, to feel that I am a little better and not a little worse for having read it. It — Theodore Roosevelt

I was almost put out of business by a well-meaning corpse. — W.C. Fields

The short answer to that is 'no.' The long answer is 'fuck no. — Stephen Fry

Sitting in the bathroom, reading the book again, he became so involved in the story that his legs fell asleep. He kept reading, intending to get up at the end of this page, then at the end of this page, if only because he would feel more comfortable with his pants up and buttoned, but he read on. He rose finally at the end of a chapter, although he read a little into the next chapter before he made himself stop. His legs were buoyant with saws and needles as he buttoned up, and he had to hold a hand against the wall not to sway from balance. Then he checked the thickness of pages he had read between his fingers, and experienced something he had never experienced before. Some of it was pride - he was reading a book - and some of it was a preciousness the book had assumed. Feeling relaxed, unthreatened, he wanted to keep the book in his hands, for what it offered. He did not want to turn the pages, for then they would be gone and spent; nor did he want to do anything but turn the pages. — Theodore Weesner

The Calling means so much to me. It's this idea of perception and how the mythology of the universe and Earth have played out and how I get to re-write that based on my imagination and some of my true feelings. It's about being a man pushing 35 and not having a sense of direction. It's about finding love and being totally unwilling to let it go. - About Qualia — Stephan Lawrence Theodore Clifford

Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover's besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls 'the mad pride of intellectuality,' taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books. — Theodore Roosevelt