Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Reading is like permitting a man to talk a long time, and refusing you the right to answer.

Reading is like permitting a man to talk a long time, and refusing you the right to answer.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought read more

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want read more

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the read more

A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion.

Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of read more

Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why --but the editorialists forget it --terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order read more

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He read more

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.