The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

We’ve got to dumb America up again.

If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

Well, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this gear.

I gave my archive to Emory University because there’s a really dear friend who teaches there, Rudolph Byrd, and he’s the editor.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

Prayer is simply talking to God like a friend and should be the easiest thing we do each day.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.

I’m terrible at reading scripts. I love to read, and I hate reading scripts.

I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‚Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you.

A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.

The devil ain’t got no power over me. The devil come, and me shake hands with the devil. Devil have his part to play. Devil’s a good friend, too… because when you don’t know him, that’s the time he can mosh you down.

In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

Never explain – your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

I don’t feel that I’m explaining the world or teaching people anything. And I’m not trying to be a mirror, showing them what’s really going on the world. All I’m trying to do is think of stuff that’s funny, just like when I’m kidding around with my friends.

It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.

I read poetry to save time.

Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk.

If the Great Way perishes there will morality and duty. When cleverness and knowledge arise great lies will flourish. When relatives fall out with one another there will be filial duty and love. When states are in confusion there will be faithful servants.

The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.

I don’t know if I officially proofread my father’s book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder.

I think that if all kids aspire to reach a point where they could feed themselves and a few of their friends, this would be good for the world surely.

Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

Books are sharks… because sharks have been around for a very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.

Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They’re solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books, and no matter what happens, books will survive.

Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.

The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.

Many admire, few know.

To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

Shakespeare – I was very influenced – still am – by Shakespeare. I couldn’t believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world.