Reading Classic Books Quotes & Sayings

My grandmother told stories; she was very good at that. — Cornelia Funke

The beauty of doing a series is that, over the course of time, it's like peeling an onion. You're able to reveal these layers, more and more. You just don't want to reveal too much, too soon. — Harry Lennix

Perhaps a book becomes a classic in proportion to how broadly its characters can be scavenged, how many readers find within it something they experience as desirable or even intimately necessary. — Janna Malamud Smith

But perhaps this is all to the good. Perhaps it's best to live with the possibility that around any corner, at any time, may come the person who reminds you of your own capacity to surprise yourself, to put at risk everything that's dear to you. Who reminds you of the distances we have to bridge to begin to know anything about one another. Who reminds you that what seems to be - even about yourself - may not be. That like him, you need to be forgiven. — Sue Miller

There is a better chance of seeing a camel pass through the eye of a needle than of seeing a really great man 'discovered' through an election. — Adolf Hitler

You give before you get. — Napoleon Hill

I don't have a long family history of good cooks in my family. — Bobby Flay

What are we after when we open one of those books? What is it that makes a classic a classic? ... in old-fashioned terms, the answer is that it wll elevate your spirit. And that's why I can't take much stock in the idea of going through a list of books or 'covering' a fixed number of selections, or anyway striving for the blessed state of having read this, or the other. Having read a book means nothing. Reading a book may be the most tremendous experience of your life; having read it is an item in your memory, part of your receding past ... Why we have that odd faith in the magic of having read a book, I don't know. We don't apply the same principle elsewhere: We don't believe in having heard Mendelssohn's violin concerto ...
I say, don't read the classics
try to discover your own classics; every life has its own. — Rudolf Flesch

Many of the greatest books are like a forest. The best way to get to know them is to wander right into the middle and get lost. — Anthony Esolen

You eternals have long lives, but short memories. The changing people have short lives, but we do not forget. — Neil Gaiman

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it. — Moses Hadas

As you are, you see everything else. — Swami Satchidananda

Without a huge shock, the sleepy-head, ignorant Japanese will never wake up. — Hiroo Onoda

A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans. — Italo Calvino

I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things
like George Macdonald's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of W.B. Yeats, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's splendid book The Kingdoms of Elfin. (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.)
I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love William Morris' early fantasy novels.
Oh, and "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees (Neil Gaiman is a big fan of that one too), and I could go on and on but I won't! — Terri Windling

Why spend your whole life on the high seas looking for treasure,' Peter asked, talking to the clouds as he scaled a rope up what remained of the half-crumbled mast, 'when you could have a promised pay check in exchange for all the life you'd live between nine-and-five. — Audrey Greathouse

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. — Italo Calvino

I've always been fascinated by books. When I was young, my grandfather used to hand out a book - which would be anything from a biography to a classic - to me every week and ask me to write a piece on what I thought about it. On the other hand, my mother used to love reading thrillers and bestsellers. — Ashwin Sanghi

A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books which he has merely skimmed, lapping at them, as the classic proverb puts it; "As the dogs drink of Nilus." Little learning and much pride come of hasty reading. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

"O, Mrs. Clennam, Mrs. Clennam," said Little Dorrit, "angry feelings and unforgiving deeds are no comfort and no guide to you and me." — Charles Dickens

Every new book we read in our brief and busy lives means that a classic is left unread. — B.R. Myers

'Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read. — Mark Twain

A classic is read not to enjoy but only to be boast about it. — Aman Jassal

She had a self she didn't devote to him. — Lauren Groff

My ears become my conduit to the world. In the darkness I listen - to thrillers, to detective novels, to romances; to family sagas, potboilers and historical novels; to ghost stories and classic fiction and chick lit; to bonkbusters and history books. I listen to good books and bad books, great books and terrible books; I do not discriminate. Steadily, hour after hour, in the darkness I consume them all. — Anna Lyndsey

Once you read a classic, you will start loving even the smell of the books. — Aman Jassal

I can't tell you what to do, Ishmael. I've tried to understand what it's been like for you - having gone to war, having lost your arm, not having married or had children. I've tried to make sense of it all, believe me, I have - how it must feel to be you. But I must confess that, no matter how I try, I can't really understand you. There are other boys, after all, who went to war and came back home and pushed on with their lives. They found girls and married and had children and raised families despite whatever was behind them. But you - you went numb, Ishmael. And you've stayed numb all these years. — David Guterson

What am I, really? The beautiful thing ... is nobody can tell us what we are. Nobody can really tell us. Not in a way that's going to be satisfactory to us. Our true nature is self-authenticating. When we bump into our true nature, it authenticates itself. Something inside us knows. This ... is what has been sought for, longed for, looked for. This is it. Usually, it's not what we expected ... — Adyashanti

You can recovery from any injury. — Lailah Gifty Akita