Literature and Quotations

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
-- Douglas Adams

I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
-- Fred Allen

From my close observation of writers...they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.
-- Isaac Asimov

We must find out what words are and how they function. They become images when written down, but images of words repeated in the mind and not of the image of the thing itself.
-- William S. Burroughs

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.
-- Lord Byron

MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts.
--Winston Churchill

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.
-- Winston Churchill

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
--Winston Churchill

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
--Winston Churchill

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.
--Winston Churchill

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
-- Albert Einstein

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them. The only books I have in my library are books that other folks have leant me.
--Anatole France

When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
--Anatole France

Read much, but not many books.
--Benjamin Franklin

This book fills a much-needed gap.
-- Moses Hadas

I have read your book and much like it.
-- Moses Hadas

I cannot live without books
-- Thomas Jefferson

The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.
-- Thomas Jefferson

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.
--Thomas Jefferson

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
--Thomas Jefferson

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
--Thomas Jefferson

No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that men can be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effective hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.
-- Thomas Jefferson

From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
-- Groucho Marx

... After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
-- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
-- Dorothy Parker

A witty saying proves nothing.
-- Voltaire

It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.
-- Voltaire

Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.
-- Voltaire

Anyone can make history. Only a great man can write it.
-- Oscar Wilde

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
-- Oscar Wilde

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.
-- Oscar Wilde

I wrote a few children's books -- not on purpose.
-- Steven Wright