Great Books Quotes

Betsy was so full of joy that she had to be alone. She went upstairs to her bedroom and sat down on Uncle Keith's trunk. Behind Tacy's house the sun had set. A wind had sprung up and the trees, their color dimmed, moved under a brooding sky. All the stories she had told Tacy and Tib seemed to be dancing in those trees, along with all the stories she planned to write some day and all the stories she would read at the library. Good stories. Great stories. The classics. Not Rena's novels.

~ Maud Hart Lovelace

It is fatal to suppose the great writer was too wise or too profound for us ever to understand him; to think of art so is not to praise but to murder it, for the next step after that tribute will be neglect of the masterpiece.

~ John Erskine

Whenever we read a book we love, we change it, to some extent. We read into it our own interpretations, and the meanings which the words have taken on in our time. If a book is so rigid that it cannot lend itself to these fluctuations, it is useful only while it seems strictly true, and afterwards it is completely out of date.

~ John Erskine

The great writings interact with one another. They cannot be read in isolation..

~ Richard J. Foster

The main danger is that of supposing that the thing to do is get a mind on the scale of Thomas (Aquinas)’s into your head, a task of compression that will be achieved only at your head’s peril. The only safe thing to do is to find a way of getting your mind into his, wherein yours has room to expand and grow, and explore the worlds his contains.

~ Denys Turner

Gulliver was soon being read from the cabinet council to the nursery.

~ John Gay

Read the great books, gentlemen,” Mr. Monte said one day. “Just the great ones. Ignore the others. There’s not enough time.

~ Pat Conroy

Great books live longer than people.They are gonna bury us all.

~ Patricia Nedelea

Be great, read great books.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I wrote this book to show you that a cure is entirely possible because I've seen it happen over and over again.

~ Chris Prentiss

You don't need to be a scientist to know how powerful your imagination is.

~ Chris Prentiss

It is commonly said to my little friend Legion: Read the great writers for style. But I say to him: Read the great dead masters for ideas. Devour them, Fletcherize them, digest, assimilate, make them part of your blood; let the enriched blood visit your brain. The resultant activities will be fairly your own, and the little kinks and convolutions of your brain, which are entirely different from the kinks of any other brain, will furnish you all the style you will ever get.There are no really fresh ideas; just as there is not any fresh air. Air and ideas are refreshed and refreshing, vitalized and vitalizing; but the thoughts have been thought before and the air has been breathed before.

~ Eugene Manlove Rhodes