Quotes & Sayings About Browsing

In the U.S., we are free to speak our minds and to spend money without being forced to reveal our identities - except when using the Web. Browsing the Web leaves digital tracks everywhere in the form of log files, and anyone who hosts a Web site can be easily traced. — Jamais Cascio

The very first hit factory was T.B. Harms, a Tin Pan Alley publishing company overseen by Max Dreyfus. With staff writers like Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers, T.B. Harms was the dominant publisher of popular music in the early twentieth century. Dreyfus called his writers "the boys" and installed pianos for them to compose on around the office on West Twenty-Eighth, the street that gave Tin Pan Alley its name, allegedly for the tinny-sounding pianos passersby heard from the upper-story windows of the row houses. The sheet-music sellers also employed piano players in their street-level stores, who would perform the Top 40 of the 1920s for browsing customers. — John Seabrook

You cannot ask a person who is created to break down fences to be the same who builds them.
The one who breaks fences believes in freedom, no boundaries and universal browsing. Those who build them believe in setting rules for others and make sure other are controlled by his/her concepts ... — Sameh Elsayed

No, one couldn't make a revolution, one couldn't even start a riot, with sheep that asked only for better browsing. — Ellen Glasgow

One of the powerful functions of a library - any library - lies in its ability to take us away from worlds that are familiar and comfortable and into ones which we can neither predict nor control, to lead us down new roads whose contours and vistas provide us with new perspectives. Sometimes, if we are fortunate, those other worlds turn out to have more points of familiarity with our own than we had thought. Sometimes we make connections back to familiar territory and when we have returned, we do so supplied with new perspectives, which enrich our lives as scholars and enhance our role as teachers. Sometimes the experience takes us beyond our immediate lives as scholars and teachers, and the library produces this result particularly when it functions as the storehouse of memory, a treasury whose texts connect us through time to all humanity.
[Browsing in the Western Stacks, Harvard Library Bulletin NS 6(3): 27-33, 1995] — Richard F. Thomas

Every really good creative person in advertising has always had two noticeable characteristics. First, there was no subject he could not easily get interested in ... Second, he was an extensive browser in all sorts of fields of information. For it is with the advertising man as with the cow: no browsing, no milk. — James Webb Young

I enjoy walking through Nolita and Chinatown, watching the people and the buildings, browsing through shops and stopping at little cafes for a cup of coffee or glass of wine. — Aslaug Magnusdottir

Computer games are like any other form of media and entertainment - you have to exercise some moderation. In the same way you can invest a lot of time in a computer game, you can invest a lot of time in watching TV or browsing the Web. So it's an issue of recognizing that this is something you should consume in moderation. — Frank Pearce

There are far too many people for us to think about each of them during our short stay on earth - like the thousands of books in a library we haven't time to read in an afternoon. But this is no excuse to cease browsing. For every now and then, we find that one book that reaches us deep inside and introduces us to ourselves. And, in someone else's story, we come to understand our own. — Richard Paul Evans

The idea of, 'The journey is the destination' is put into action by browsing in an indie record store. Besides, a human being is a much better guide than a 'More Like This' link on the internet. — Patton Oswalt

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don't use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.
And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing.
What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don't force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T. S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don't understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day. — Ray Bradbury

M F K Fisher is the dowager queen of writers on browsing and slicing. — Philip Howard, 20th Earl Of Arundel

Some of the best times I've spent in Colorado have been in the backcountry with my mom and siblings, and more recently, with my own kids. That is why I'm concerned to see today's kids spending more time browsing the Internet than exploring nature. — Mark Udall

If you've ever signed up for a website and given a fake zip code or a fake birthday, you have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Any child under thirteen who visits newyorktimes violates their Terms of Service and is a criminal - not just in theory, but according to the working doctrine of the Department of Justice.1 The examples I've laid out are extreme, sure, but the laws involved are so broadly written as to ensure that, essentially, every Internet-using American is a tort-feasing felon on a lifelong spree of depraved web browsing. — Christian Rudder

Coup de foudre; perhaps it was real. One went from believing, when twenty, that it was the one kind of love that was real, to believing, once closer to forty, that it was not only fragile but false
the inferior, infantile, doomed love of twenty-year-olds. Somewhere between, the norms of one culture of love were discarded, and those of the other assumed. When did it happen, at midnight of one's thirty-first birthday? On the variable day that, while browsing a grocery-store aisle with a man, the repeating refrain of the rest of one's life for the first time resounds in one's ear? — Susan Choi

LinkedIn is very good for browsing relationships and hooking into your contacts' networks. It re-connected me with high-level execs I hadn't talked to for some time, who then helped me close various deals. — Danah Boyd

His goal (Bezos's)was not just to make browsing for books easy, but an enjoyable experience. "People don't just buy books because they need books," he has said. "There are products like that. Pharmaceuticals are that way. Nobody enjoys browsing the Preparation H counter. But people will gladly spend hours in a bookstore, so you have to make the shopping experience fun and engaging. — Richard L. Brandt

Just looking at them I grow greedy, as if they were freshly baked loaves waiting on their shelves to be broken open
that one and that
and I make my choice in a mood of exalted luck, browsing among them like a cow in sweetest pasture. For life is continuous as long as they wait to be read
these inked paths opening into the future, page after page, every book its own receding horizon. And I hold them, one in each hand, a curious ballast weighing me here to earth. — Linda Pastan

I passed the time browsing in the windows of the many tourists shops that stand along it, reflecting on what a lot of things the Scots have given the world - kilts, bagpipes, tam-o'-shanters, tins of oatcakes, bright yellow sweaters with big diamond patterns, sacks of haggis - and how little anyone but a Scot would want them. Let — Bill Bryson

Every room I've lived in since I was given my own room at eleven was lined with, and usually overfull of, books. My employment in bookstores was always continuous with my private hours: shelving and alphabetizing, building shelves, and browsing
in my collection and others
in order to understand a small amount about the widest possible number of books. Such numbers of books are constantly acquired that constant culling is necessary; if I slouch in this discipline, the books erupt. I've also bricked myself in with music
vinyl records, then compact discs. My homes have been improbably information-dense, like capsules for survival of a nuclear war, or models of the interior of my own skull. That comparison
room as brain
is one I've often reached for in describing the rooms of others, but it began with the suspicion that I'd externalized my own brain, for anyone who cared to look. — Jonathan Lethem

Browsing our local farmer's market is one of my family's favorite weekend activities. Make it a relaxing, healthful habit for your family, and you'll reap the nutritional rewards. — Suzanne Somers

It can't possibly last for years and browsing has its limits. Only a certain amount is healthy or wise. — Judith Krantz

Everyone and his Big Brother wants to log your browsing habits, the better to build a profile of who you are and how you live your life - online and off. Search engine companies offer a benefit in return: more relevant search results. The more they know about you, the better they can tailor information to your needs. — Barton Gellman

Recently while browsing in a secondhand bookstore I bought a paperback copy of The Intellectual and the City, but I was unable to read it. When I got home I discovered that the original owner had highlighted the entire book - literally. Every line on every page had been drawn through with a bright green Magic Marker. It was a terrifying example of a mind that had lost all power of discrimination. — Florence King

In the old days, when he flew a lot, he'd never been able to get absorbed in a book until the plane had taken off, so he'd spent the pre-boarding time flicking through magazines and browsing in gift shops, and that's what the last couple of decades had felt like: one long flick through a magazine. If he'd known how long he was going to spend in the airport lounge of his own life, he'd have made different travel arrangements, but instead he'd sat there, sighing and fidgeting and, more often than was ever really acceptable, snapping at his traveling companions. — Nick Hornby

What we read and why we do so defines us in a profound way. You are what you read, I suppose. Browsing through someone's library is like peeking into their DNA — Guillermo Del Toro

I wanted to make people aware of libraries as an ecosystem that are threatened in the same way as coral reefs. There's a kind of serendipity that occurs in a library that never happens online. Browsing a stack is a unique experience: that feeling of being attracted by a book, by its cover or typography. What makes me melancholy is the thought of books disappearing from libraries. — Phyllis Rose

Another contender was Nokia's 9000 Communicator, a book-sized tool that looked like a cellphone strapped onto a mini keyboard. A precursor to the smartphone, the 9000 combined computing, cellular, and Internet applications such as browsing and e-mail. The Finnish phone was so glamorous it was used by Val Kilmer's Simon Templar character in the 1997 remake of The Saint. Few consumers, however, could afford the $800 price tag, and wireless cellular network carriers more accustomed to handling voice traffic charged a fortune to relay — Jacquie McNish

copy instead of finding the book on the shelf. And the finding is half the fun. Browsing on either side, above and below, that is the joy of it. — Mary Jane Hathaway

Perhaps love in the digital age is more like Netflix binge-watching: we enjoy bursts of fantasy, and then move on to something else when it's done. Like browsing for a new series on Netflix, if the relationship doesn't fit perfectly, you can trade it in for something new with the click of a button or a swipe on your phone. — Shannon Mullen

Net-a-porter is an environment where a woman can really indulge, browsing through more than 160 brands in our fashion playground. — Natalie Massenet

We do not live in a time when knowledge can be extended along a pathway smooth and free from obstacles, as at the time of the discovery of the infinitesimal calculus, and in a measure also when in the development of projective geometry obstacles were suddenly removed which, having hemmed progress for a long time, permitted a stream of investigators to pour in upon virgin soil. There is no longer any browsing along the beaten paths; and into the primeval forest only those may venture who are equipped with the sharpest tools. — Heinrich Burkhardt

I think bookstore browsing will become more cherished as time goes on because it can't be replicated virtually. — Chuck Hogan

I received my birthday greetings on Facebook. It was weird to get tens of happy birthday messages on my wall and not know whether they had smiled, or if they had dedicated more than a few seconds while browsing other people's messages, email, web sites, chat windows, and who knows what else. I have never met in real life most of the people who greeted me. Some of them I don't even know or remember who they are. None of the people who left me a birthday message called my phone. — Ivo Quartiroli

In its quest to organize the world's information, Google has scoured vast troves of data to amass the greatest accumulation of information assets on the planet, including the billions of search queries on google and YouTube and the billions of interactions on Android, the dominant operating system for most mobile devices. Google also controls an ever-growing index of the world's websites and the browsing history of more than 2 billion users, three types of maps of the Earth's surface and traffic patterns, a real-time list of trending topics, the largest archive of discussions in Usenet groups, the entire contents of 20 million books, a huge collection of photographs, the largest collection of video on the planet, the largest online email repository, even the largest archive of DNA data. — Robert Tercek

I left Los Angeles on 3 January and arrived in Sydney fourteen hours later on 5 January. For me there was no 4 January. None at all. Where it went exactly I couldn't tell you. All I know is that for one twenty-four-hour period in the history of Earth, it appears I had no being. I find that a little uncanny, to say the least. I mean to say, if you were browsing through your ticket folder and you saw a notice that said: 'Passengers are advised that on some crossings twenty-four-hour loss of existence may occur — Bill Bryson

They pulled the wet saddles off the horses and hobbled them and walked off in separate directions through the chaparral to stand spraddle legged clutching their knees and vomiting. The browsing horses jerked their heads up. It was no sound they'd ever heard before. In the grey twilight those retchings seemed to echo like the calls of some rude provisional species loosed upon that waste. A thing smirking deep in the eyes of grace itself like a gorgon in an autumn pool. — Cormac McCarthy

A few days earlier, Adriana and I had been browsing books at the local library. I happened to turn around and look at her ... and that was it. The man who "loved to laugh" in Mary Poppins had nothing on us. — Gina Marinello-Sweeney

If forensic analysts confiscated your calendar and e-mail records and Web browsing history for the past six months, what would they conclude are your core priorities? — Chip Heath

Words fascinate me. They always have. For me, browsing in a dictionary is like being turned loose in a bank. — Eddie Cantor

I think periods of browsing during which no occupation is imposed from without are important in youth because they give time for the formation of these apparently fugitive but really vital impressions. — Bertrand Russell

Sometimes the books were arranged under signs, but sometimes they were just anywhere and everywhere. After I understood people better, I realized that this incredible disorder was one of the things that they loved about Pembroke Books. They did not come there just to buy a book, plunk down some cash and scram. They hung around. They called it browsing, but it was more like excavation or mining. I was surprised they didn't come in with shovels. They dug for treasures with bare hands, up to their armpits sometimes, and when they hauled some literary nugget from a mound of dross, they were much happier than if they had just walked in and bought it. In that way, shopping at Pembroke was like reading: you never knew what you might encounter on the next page
the next shelf, stack, or box
and that was part of the pleasure of it. — Sam Savage

Increasingly, there will be accountability to the business side, especially in the world of ad viewability. This is the awkward term for a new insistence from marketers that they'll pay up only if at least 50% of an ad is in view for at least one continuous second. In that scenario, reading versus browsing is critical because it means ads on a post will be seen, pushing up click-throughs and ad rates. I suggested Super Journalists would get paid for hitting certain time-spent metrics. Well, for one post anyway, I hit a few super numbers tracked by Moat. After about 1,000 views, my average active dwell time (that is, time spent reading) was — Anonymous

True browsing means that we discover shelves and subjects that we could not have anticipated when we started. And the books we read introduce us to other books, as if we are at a magnificent party of the mind, being ever welcomed by new friends to join in the conversation. — Ramona Koval

Browsing for books with a mouse and screen is not nearly as joyful an act as wandering the stacks and getting lost in the labyrinthine corridors of knowledge. The best libraries are places of imagination, education and community. The best libraries have mystery to them. — Sam Weller

Browsing the first editions at my local independent bookstore, I came across 'Pastoralia,' a collection of stories by George Saunders. I'd read one of the stories in it already, and several other Saunders stories in magazines and anthologies, and liked them all. — Trenton Lee Stewart

I don't read a lot of magazines, but when I'm traveling, I'll pick up a copy of 'Vanity Fair' to read on the plane - it's like a full meal! The articles are so good, especially the crime stories. Browsing the Web is more like snacking - but I live on snacks. — Sam Trammell

I always made sure to put them back in the exact order in which I had found them, for fear of losing the privilege of browsing in my uncle's library. — Firoozeh Dumas

In this age of getting what you want and getting it now, the simple pleasure of browsing is often forgotten. — Tom Hodgkinson

I've gone back a full month. There's nothing remarkable in her emails or her browsing history." "I have no idea why I wanted to work with you," Zack says, stretching his arms over his head. "Clearly, you suck. — S.J. Harper

Sometimes, after they'd done the shopping, they would stop, each with his or her cart, in front of a bookstore that carried the paperback edition of his book. His wife would point to it and say: you're still there. Invariably, he would nod and then they would continue browsing the mall stores. Did he know her or didn't he? He knew her, of course he did, it was just that sometimes reality, the same little reality that served to anchor reality, seemed to fade around the edges, as if the passage of time had a porous effect on things, and blurred and made more insubstantial what was itself already, by its very nature, insubstantial and satisfactory and real. — Roberto Bolano

I am still a learner, not a teacher, feeding somewhat omnivorously, browsing both stalk & leaves — Henry David Thoreau

With any luck, Heaven itself will resemble a vast used bookstore, with a really good cafe in one corner, serving dark beer and kielbasa to keep up one's strength while browsing, and all around will be the kind of angels usually found in Victoria's Secret catalogs. — Michael Dirda

I took my time, running my fingers along the spines of books, stopping to pull a title from the shelf and inspect it. A sense of well-being flowed through me as I circled the ground floor. It was better than meditation or a new pair of shoes- or even chocolate. My life was a disaster, but there were still books. Lots and lots of books. A refuge. A solace. Each one offering the possibility of a new beginning. — Beth Pattillo

Few pleasures, for the true reader, rival the pleasure of browsing unhurriedly among books: old books, new books, library books, other people's books, one's own books - it does not matter whose or where. Simply to be among books, glancing at one here, reading a page from one over there, enjoying them all as objects to be touched, looked at, even smelt, is a deep satisfaction. And often, very often, while browsing haphazardly, looking for nothing in particular, you pick up a volume that suddenly excites you, and you know that this one of all the others you must read. Those are great moments - and the books we come across like that are often the most memorable. — Aidan Chambers

Brambles, in particular, protect and nourish young fruit trees, and on farms bramble clumps (blackberry or one of its related cultivars) can be used to exclude deer and cattle from newly set trees. As the trees (apple, quince, plum, citrus, fig) age, and the brambles are shaded out, hoofed animals come to eat fallen fruit, and the mature trees (7 plus years old) are sufficiently hardy to withstand browsing. Our forest ancestors may well have followed some such sequences for orchard evolution, assisted by indigenous birds and mammals. — Bill Mollison

Her efforts received encouragement. In fact, they were welcomed as the Tallises began to understand that the baby of the family possessed a strange mind and a facility with words. The long afternoons she spent browsing through the dictionary and thesaurus made for constructions that were inept, but hauntingly so: the coins a villain concealed in his pocket were 'esoteric,' a hoodlum caught stealing a car wept in 'shameless auto-exculpation,' the heroine on her thoroughbred stallion made a 'cursory' journey through the night, the king's furrowed brow was the 'hieroglyph' of his displeasure. — Ian McEwan

Despite demand, the BlackBerry avoided offering generalized web browsing support. — Steven Sinofsky

As in most obituaries, the author said little about the man; they rarely do. But the reticence here was greater than usual. It mentioned that Ravenscliff left a wife, but did not say when they married. It said nothing at all about his life, nor where he lived. There were not even any of the usual phrases to give a slight hint: 'a natural raconteur' (loved the sound of his own voice); 'Noted for his generosity to friends' (profligate); 'a formidable enemy . . .' (a brute); 'a severe but fair employer . . .' (a slave-driver); 'devoted to the turf' (never read a book in his life); 'a life-long bachelor' (vice); 'a collector of flowers' (this meant a great womaniser. Why it came to mean such a thing I do not know.) More browsing — Iain Pears

Texting, even browsing the Internet - all these things can attract monsters. — Rick Riordan

Since the choice of what we curl up with is often crucial for our solace and sanity, we need to learn how to nurture the talent of selection. Book browsing is a meditative art ... Books are as essential as breathing. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

I loved doing problems in school. I'd take them home and make up new ones of my own. But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library. I was just browsing through the section of math books and I found this one book, which was all about one particular problem - Fermat's Last Theorem. — Andrew Wiles

I first discovered YouTube while browsing the web, and then I found people just talking into their cameras. I never even knew it was a thing you could do. William Sledd was my first YouTube obsession. He was so unapologetically himself, and just had fun talking to his audience about things that interested him. I thought - if he could do it, why couldn't I? — Tyler Oakley

People still love browsing book stores, and there is an element of passion in collecting DVDs; however, it seems unlikely that the desire to collect boxes or a preference for physical artwork over thumbnails are strong enough forces to hold back the convenience (and, arguably, inevitability) of digital copies. — Jeff Ulin

While browsing in a second-hand bookshop one day, George Bernard Shaw was amused to find a copy of one of his own works which he himself had inscribed for a friend: "To
, with esteem, George Bernard Shaw."
He immediately purchased the book and returned it to the friend with a second inscription: "With renewed esteem, George Bernard Shaw. — George Bernard Shaw

The implications are clear: Facebook wants to build an Internet where watching films, listening to music, reading books and even browsing is done not just openly but socially and collaboratively. — Evgeny Morozov

I find web browsing, checking multiple email accounts, and Google mapping rather tiresome on an iPhone - the iPhone's native interface, for all its supposed perfection, has all kinds of wrong baked in - and the screen is just far too small. — John Battelle

Death is, perhaps, the only certainty in life that still manages to catch us off guard. And while browsing a headstone catalog (yes, they really have such a thing) over a glass of wine might not sound like a recipe for the perfect date night, taking time to address the small things (Does your wife know what all the keys on your key ring are for? Does your husband know how to make a pot of coffee, or even where you keep the filters?) and even the not-so-small things can make a big difference in how you will cope, should you one day find yourself in my shoes - dressed in black and — Anonymous

The addictive nature of Web browsing can leave you with an attention span of nine seconds - the same as a goldfish. — Sally Hogshead

Writing time is for writing, not for checking e-mail, reading the news, or browsing the latest issues of journals. Sometimes I think it would be nice to download articles while writing, but I can do that at the office. The best kind of self-control is to avoid situations that require self-control. — Paul J. Silvia

The main vehicle for nineteenth-century socialization was the leading textbook used in elementary school. They were so widely used that sections in them became part of the national language. Theodore Roosevelt, scion of an elite New York family, schooled by private tutors, had been raised on the same textbooks as the children of Ohio farmers, Chicago tradesman, and New England fishermen. If you want to know what constituted being a good American from the mid-nineteenth century to World War I, spend a few hours browsing through the sections in the McGuffey Readers. — Charles Murray

All it takes is for me to try and not think of Garrett, and suddenly, he's consuming my every idle musing. Picking a radio station? Garrett only listened to NPR. Browsing the refrigerator for orange juice? Garrett likes the pulp style best. — Abby McDonald

I had just got back from skiing, and I was just hanging out, browsing the Internet, and I found some article that was a press release that said slope style was gonna be included in the Olympics. And the first thing I did was call up my coach Mike Hanley, and we were ecstatic. — Nick Goepper

People complain that the religious ground is unsure who have never compelled themselves to examine it with a tithe of the care spent on a contract; but they have taken current suggestions in a dreamy and hypnotised way. They will not attend, they will not force themselves to attend, gravely to the gravest things ... they read everything in a vagrant, browsing fashion. They turn on the most serious subjects the holiday, seaside, newspaper habit of mind — Peter Forsyth

In spite of my own reservations about Bing's ability to convert Google users, I have to admit that the search engine does offer a genuine alternative to Google-style browsing, a more coherently organized selection of links, and a more advertiser-friendly environment through which to sell space and links. — Douglas Rushkoff

Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person's bookcase and their grocery cart, she'd pretty much know who they were. — Louise Penny

I missed the anonymity-the ability to run to the market without running into my third-grade teacher.
I missed the nightlife-the knowledge that if I wanted to, there was always an occasion to get dressed up and head out for dinner and drinks.
I missed the restaurants-the Asian, the Thai, the Italian the Indian. I was already tired of mashed potatoes and canned green beans.
I missed the culture- the security that comes from being on the touring schedule of the major Broadway musicals.
I missed the shopping-the funky boutiques, the eclectic shops, the browsing.
I missed the city. — Ree Drummond

Walking rapidly - or even slowly - through a gallery is equivalent to browsing through a bookstore and reading the blurbs. — Wendy Beckett

The strange things of the past which I learnt during those nocturnal meetings with the dead he dismisses as the fruits of my lifelong and omnivorous browsing amongst the ancient volumes of the family library. Had it not been for my old servant Hiram, I should have by this time become quite convinced of my madness. But — H.P. Lovecraft

We got email today from an LGF reader who was browsing the Lexis research system and discovered that anti-American, anti-capitalist icon Noam Chomsky has embarrassingly capitalist tastes; among other expensive property he owns a 36,155 square foot home near Cambridge, a 13,503 square foot vacation home, and four boats. And we won't even mention the cars. Teaching kids to hate their own country seems to pay quite well. — Charles Foster Johnson

Once he entered my life, I promptly forgot all my years of putting on a brave face while browsing
at bookstores until closing time, and of having one, two, three beers while watching crime shows
and CNN. I completely forgot the hateful sensation of loneliness, like thirst and hunger together
pressing on my stomach. — Douglas Coupland

Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch just announced that he is stepping down after three years. When asked if he's looking for a new job, he was like, 'Nah, just browsing.' — Jimmy Fallon