But even now, with the crates piled high in the hall, what I see most plainly about the books is that they are beautiful. They take up room? Of course they do: they are an environment; atoms, not bits. My books are not dead weight, they are live weight – matter infused by spirit, every one of them, even the silliest. They do not block the horizon; they draw it. They free me from the prison of contemporaneity: one should not live only in one’s own time. A wall of books is a wall of windows. Leon Wieseltier
A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.
-
David Mitchell
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books
-
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and...
-
Deb Caletti
I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."" Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes,...
-
Jane Austen
Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.
-
E. Lockhart
More Quotes By Leon Wieseltier
Surely it is foolish to hate facts. The struggle against the past is a futile struggle. Acceptance seems so much more like wisdom. I know all this. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>And yet there are some facts that one must never, never accept. This is not merely...
It is never long before identity is reduced to loyalty.
..it's exemplification of our moment in American culture and American cultural journalism. It is an accurate document of the discourse of "takes." This movie, that book, this poem, that painting, this record, that show: Make a smart remark and move on. A take is an...
But even now, with the crates piled high in the hall, what I see most plainly about the books is that they are beautiful. They take up room? Of course they do: they are an environment; atoms, not bits. My books are not dead weight,...
In flight from intellectual heaviness, [he] arrives at intelligent weightlessness. Every notion is flipped this way and that; the answer to every question is yes and no; the proliferating examples from all the arts..overwhelm the observations that they are designed to illustrate; the general impression...
