c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
And I remember this man who never ran out of poems telling me once that 'knowing a book by heart is like carrying a house inside your chest.
— Hisham Matar, The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between
One great book can change the perspective and understanding of a whole nation
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Don't let the covers fool you. Books, like lives, are wiggling, evolving, living things. They're not bound by pages or authors or schools of thought. They're not born when they're printed; in fact, they only start to live once they're read. So first of all, we thank you, reader. You dignify this work we do, and we're sincerely grateful for your time and attention.
— Kelly G. Wilson, Things Might Go Terribly, Horribly Wrong: A Guide to Life Liberated from Anxiety
I have read 391 books... please- Enlight Me- Enlight Me- Enlight Me- Enlight Me- Enlight Me- Enlight Me
— Deyth Banger
I collected speech from so called "Smart", "Genius" nation... the judge is going to be made from you... ...Don't worry "Notes of A Dead Man Sequel" are going to be one damn long journey.
— Deyth Banger, Notes Of A Dead Man Sequel
I didn't doubt for a moment that she had read them all, or that they were the right books to own. Further, they seemed to be an organic combination of her mind and personality, whereas mine struck me as functionally separate, straining to describe a character I hoped to grow into.
— Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
For DeHaven it was well worth the extra money to a federal budget that had always allocated more to war than it ever did to peaceful purposes. For a fraction of the cost of one missile he could purchase on the open market every work the library needed to round out its rare books collection. Yet politicians believed that missiles kept you safe, whereas actually books did, and for a simple reason. Ignorance caused wars, and people who read widely were seldom ignorant.
— David Baldacci, The Collectors
Non-fiction is to theory as fiction is to experience.
— Joyce Rachelle
It’s such a relief to know these are universal truths for so many of us in the adoption triad. Gosh, how much easier things could have been for you, for me, and your folks, if literature like this had been around, say, five, ten years ago, when we could’ve all really used it.
— Paula Gruben, Umbilicus
I’m so glad to hear you are a reader, and you found these books to help you work through things on your own.
— Paula Gruben, Umbilicus
For all her faults, it was actually my mom who instilled in me a love of reading, and books, for which I will always be grateful. She’s a complete bibliophile, so I’ve pretty much grown up around libraries and books.
— Paula Gruben, Umbilicus
Don't judge me by my books. They're not my voices, and they were never my stories to tell.
— Nadège Richards
Well… Actually, just read any books you find interesting will do. Even books that seem boring aren’t actually that dull. It’s just that the reader couldn’t find the interesting parts.
— Yukiya Murasaki, Haken no Kouki Altina 6 [覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ 6 ]
After the end of the world, there is a world. Life doesn’t stop. It changes. And it changes me.
— Caroline George, The Vestige
As for fairy tales, he understood that they were reflections of the people who had spun them, and were flecked with little truths - intrusions of reality into fantasy, like toast crumbs on a wizard's beard.
— Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer
On the occasions that he did look up from the page, he would seem as though he were awakening from a dream.
— Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer
He wasn't an alchemist, or a hero. He was a librarian, and a dreamer. He was a reader, and the unsung expert on a long-lost city no one cared a thing about.
— Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer
It was a different life out here, but make no mistake: Lazlo was every bit the dreamer he had always been, if not more. He might have left his books, but he carried all his stories with him.
— Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer
Every morning I tell myself, "I'll sleep early tonight." And every night I say, "One more chapter.
— Joyce Rachelle
Even if it was just walls and a roof with papers inside, it had bewitched him, and drawn him in, and given him everything he needed to become himself.
— Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer
Politicians in our times feed their clichés to television, where even those who wish to disagree repeat them. Television purports to challenge political language by conveying images, but the succession from one frame to another can hinder a sense of resolution. Everything happens fast, but nothing actually happens. Each story on televised news is ”breaking” until it is displaced by the next one. So we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean.The effort to define the shape and significance of events requires words and concepts that elude us when we are entranced by visual stimuli. Watching televised news is sometimes little more than looking at someone who is also looking at a picture. We take this collective trance to be normal. We have slowly fallen into it.More than half a century ago, the classic novels of totalitarianism warned of the domination of screens, the suppression of books, the narrowing of vocabularies, and the associated difficulties of thought. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953, firemen find and burn books while most citizens watch interactive television. In George Orwell’s 1984, published in 1949, books are banned and television is two-way, allowing the government to observe citizens at all times. In 1984, the language of visual media is highly constrained, to starve the public of the concepts needed to think about the present, remember the past, and consider the future. One of the regime’s projects is to limit the language further by eliminating ever more words with each edition of the official dictionary.Staring at screens is perhaps unavoidable, but the two-dimensional world makes little sense unless we can draw upon a mental armory that we have developed somewhere else. When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires reading. So get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books. The characters in Orwell’s and Bradbury’s books could not do this—but we still can.
— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
He was not a scholar – his brain seemed too sluggish or too dreamy to grasp the things demanded of it – but he was never happier than when left alone among books, and would spend hours turning the pages of atlases, novels or tales from history, alive to the alternative versions of himself they seemed to proffer.
— Patrick Gale, A Place Called Winter
You can tell if someone really loves Books by the way they look at them, how they open and close them, how they turn the pages.
— Milena Busquets, This Too Shall Pass
Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books.
— Robertson Davies
Things belong to the people that use them, not to the people who create them.
— John Green
My books are my brain and my heart made visible.
— Merilyn Simonds, Gutenberg’s Fingerprint: A Book Lover Bridges the Digital Divide
A library bears similar qualities to a hospital. Librarians are like doctors, books the prescriptions.
— Trudy Wallis, Longbourn Library: A Novel of Pride, Prejudice, and Books
Books were a dependable pleasure. I read more then than I ever was able to read again until now when I am too old to work much and am mostly alone.
— Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter
I wish I could think about nothing, but the books all the time. I have never had an alcoholic rampage because of thinking about books too much...
— Robert Gacho
But sir, I'm seventeen," I reply bluntly. "I'm genetically programmed to want to make statements.
— Sarah Ayoub, The Yearbook Committee
Crusoe and Friday. Ishmael and Ahab. Daisy and Gatsby. Pip and Estella. Me. Me. Me. I am not alone. I am surrounded by words that tell me who I am, why I feel what I feel. Or maybe they just help me while away the hours as the rain pounds down on the porch roof, taking me away from the gloom and on to somewhere sunny, somewhere else.
— Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life
And, the treasure? A library card: key to all the doors in the story world.
— Trudy Wallis, Longbourn Library: A Novel of Pride, Prejudice, and Books
In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself.
— Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life
Books. It's always easier to tell people that a character is funny rather than attempt to hit the punchline of a joke that character would've said. But if we all simply told, books would cease to exist. And so would empathy. And feeling.
— Joyce Rachelle
Many books describe different problem solving techniques, but solving complicated problems in reality is not so easy.
— Eraldo Banovac
A young woman forced to keep drunks supplied with beer and siblings with cleanunderwear—instead of being allowed to pursue something higher —stores up greatreserves of vitality, a vitality never dreamed of by university students yawning over theirbooks. (...) The difference between the universitygraduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in theextent of vitality and self-confidence. The elan with which Tereza flung herself into hernew Prague existence was both frenzied and precarious. She seemed to be expectingsomeone to come up to her any day and say, What are you doing here? Go back whereyou belong!
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Within a year or two, however, a couple of the first things I wrote – ‘Anarchy In The UK’ and ‘God Save The Queen’ – really hit their target. I’d like to thank the British public library system: that was my training ground, that’s where I learned to throw those verbal grenades. I wasn’t just throwing bricks through shop windows as a voice of rebellion, I was throwing words where they really mattered. Words count.
— John Lydon, Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored
Each book which so far is written is filled with a new thoughts... new images... new arguments... new discussions.
— Deyth Banger
My mother explained the magic with this washing machine the very, very first day. She said, 'Now Hans, we have loaded the laundry. The machine will make the work. And now we can go to the library.' Because this is the magic: you load the laundry, and what do you get out of the machine? You get books out of the machines, children's books.
— Hans Rosling
If all shy, soulful young women who dreamed of becoming writers for a living actually could do that, imagine the library we would have.
— Sarah Elwell
Poetry is jealous of you tonight, for as soon as I come to pen a few words, your perfume attacks me in the most civilised manner and I forget myself. I forget the poem. I forget the ...
— Kamand Kojouri
We've all grown unaccustomed to life, we're all lame, each of us more or less. We've even grown so unaccustomed that at times we feel a sort of loathing for real "living life," and therefore cannot bear to be reminded of it. For we've reached a point where we regard real "living life" almost as a labor, almost as a service, and we all agree in ourselves that it's better from a book.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
This is a woman who didn’t want her viewpoints challenged, nor to see the views of the half of the world that comprises men. Her assumption is that all male authors are sexist and that their books distort the views of women....that’s bigoted and despicable: the form of feminism that sees men as the enemy from the outset, and seeks to reinforce that prejudice by reading only books that keep her in her safe space.....The future, in both life and books, is men and women together, with a mutual understanding that can come only from learning about each other’s thoughts. [About Caitlin Moran's sexist statement that girls shouldn't read any books written by men.]
— Jerry Coyne
I thought I would write a love letter. But then, I wrote a book." - Suzy Davies, on "Johari's Window
— Suzy  Davies
Archie says books are our best lovers and our most provoking friends.
— Stephanie Butland, Lost For Words
The Golden Horn of Griffo is finely wrought," Zenodotus said, tracing his finger along the curve of Telemach's treasure. "And the magic is in its making alone. Do you understand? There is no sorcery here..."“Magic is not the only power in this world,” the old mage said gently, handing the horn back to its royal owner. “Griffo made an instrument so perfect that even the dead must rise to hear its call. He made it with his hands, without spells or dragon-songs. I wish that I could do the same.
— Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
The wider we read the freer we become.
— Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
The pain is real. Flowing as a brook beneath my flesh. I am broken, and yet, I still breathe.
— E.M. Benton
I don't care about wearing branded clothes or flaunting brands. But I do care about the books that I read and the music that I listen to.
— Avijeet Das
I find it quite intriguing that the one observing me as different, immediately assumes that there's something wrong with me, but never, not even for one instant, questions the possibility of the opposite. It's truly amazing that the ones with more certainties, the most arrogant and the most selfish, are indeed the most stupid inside society. They are so dumb and ignorant that they can't see a writer in front of their nose. And the more the writer types, talks and thinks, the more they think that this separation, this difference, grants them some form of superiority. Indeed, the light pushes demons into hell. The brighter your light, the faster you differentiate others. The way of the light was never meant for the weak, which are a majority. And this majority will always ignore the light, as demons fearing and hating angels. And so, it's interesting that without artists God would not have a way to reach the world. And yet, without the ignorant, Satan wouldn't have a way to stop God.
— Robin Sacredfire
I always have enjoyed people to read for me or to have the chace to listen of how they narrate a book.
— Deyth Banger
Are we to deny our daughters the works of Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck or Shakespeare?....Where is the equality in banning girls from enjoying wonderful works of literature?....What kind of society defines suitable reading material by sex? This is indefensible censorship encouraging ignorance and bias. [About Caitlin Moran's statement.]
— Diane Davies
I often find that once a child unlocks the secret of words, they hunger for them. There is a kind of magic in reading. It takes the mind to places where the body may not go, allowing one to forget, for a while, life's troubles.
— Liana LeFey, Once a Courtesan
You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that.
— C.S. Lewis
Something in me - probably a small, nationalist dwarf part of my brain - something in me would like to feel proud of Dutch literature. But its hard to when the annual 'book week gift' year in year out is granted to a male. I dont like being part of an unjust system. But let me say this: it is the election method that is the real problem here. The 'vergadering' (meeting) that employs a simple flagging system - the basic way almost everything is decided here, from literary prizes to how much money is divided - it is a system based on the destruction of subtle values. You cannot ever ever say: I didnt understand this book. You can only say 'yes' or 'no'. And that system, that annihilates all forms of subtlety, that system is patriarchal in all its essence. So its useless to simply maintain the method, and try alter the outcome.
— Martijn Benders
Books have the power to create, destroy or change civilization.
— Zaman Ali, Humanity
I only wrote prose before I met you. My musings were superfluous and serious as well. But now the words dance with me. I sing with them and we create poetry.
— Kamand Kojouri
If Kindle is upgraded with face recognition and biometric sensors, it can know what made you laugh, what made you sad and what made you angry. Soon, books will read you while you are reading them.
— Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
Patches don’t look it, but when attached to your soul they can get pretty heavy. They go over the holes in your soul, like when you patch a sock. When you have a hole in your soul, it’s because you’re hurting from something. I don’t know if you noticed, but that girl had a lot of holes.
— Nathan Reese Maher, Lights Out: Book 2
The shadow self is what lies beneath the makeup. It’s those ugly parts that you haven’t accepted about yourself. You hide those parts in the shadows until you’re ready.” Her face remained a haunting calm. “When you realize the scars are who you are, that there was nothing wrong with you and that you were beautiful all along - that’s when you decide to take the makeup off.
— Nathan Reese Maher, Lights Out: Book 2
Flowers for Algernon again? she asks. Doesn't that book always make you cry?One day it won't, I say. I want to be sure to be reading it on that day.
— Nicola Yoon, Everything, Everything
If I had to choose between all the books in the world and you, then I would choose to read your body for the rest of my life.
— Kamand Kojouri
Because I am, just as you are you. We don’t always get to pick who we are, Shelly Wynn, but we can choose to celebrate it.
— Nathan Reese Maher, Lights Out: Book 2
There’s nothing wrong with you at all. Sometimes people say or do things that are mean because there's something the matter with them. With Lydia, it seems there’s always something wrong with her.
— Nathan Reese Maher, Lights Out: Book 2
And once more given to inaction,Empty in spirit and alone,He settled down – to the distractionOf making other minds his own;Collecting books, he stacked a shelfful,Read, read, not even one was helpful:Here, there was dullness, there pretence;This one lacked conscience, that one sense;All were by different shackles fettered;And, past times having lost their hold,The new still raved about the old.Like women, books he now deserted,And mourning taffeta he drewAcross the bookshelf’s dusty crew.
— Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin
That is how we writers all started: by reading. We heard the voice of a book speaking to us.
— Margaret Atwood
Words have the power to change us." - Tessa Gray
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
I am calling it a journey because the beauty of reading is, while you are reading you are in the same phase and the same mood the book is offering for as many days you continue to read.
— Ishaque
I’m afraid they’re not coming.” Abby said fearfully. “Our parents, our teachers – everyone! They’ve disappeared. That’s it. Lights out, Shelly. We’re on our own.
— Nathan Reese Maher, Lights Out: Book 2
Lydia displays her right hand and instantly bathed the room with a blinding light. It lasted only a moment before it drew back into her palm. “I can fix you if you’re ever broken. 
— Nathan Reese Maher
It’s no big deal. It’s kind of like a tattoo. It won’t hurt, not too much, just a few stitches and it’ll be all over. It’s really interesting how it’s done. You won’t believe where your soul hides. Go on, take a guess. Where do you think it is?
— Nathan Reese Maher, Lights Out: Book 2
Aloha Oukou. It looked like your soul was escaping so I put you in a tree.
— Nathan Reese Maher, Lights Out: Book 2
She could spin it between her legs, skip with it, twirl it around her neck and transfer it from one arm to the other. Shelly hooped because she enjoyed it; it calmed her whenever she would have an argument or a bad day at school, and it also allowed her to think. Today, she needed to hoop more than ever.
— Nathan Reese Maher, Lights Out: Book 2
Somehow her hula hoop had cut into the driver’s side door like the vehicle was made of cheese.
— Nathan Reese Maher, Lights Out: Book 2
Soon, all the children were chanting it. “No school! No school!
— Nathan Reese Maher, Lights Out: Book 2
Books saved you. Having become your refuge, they sustained you. The power of books, this marvelous invention of astute human intelligence. Various signs associated with sound: different sounds that form the word. Juxtaposition of words from which springs the idea, Thought, History, Science, Life. Sole instrument of interrelationships and of culture, unparalleled means of giving and receiving. Books knit generations together in the same continuing effort that leads to progress. They enabled you to better yourself. What society refused you, they granted.
— Mariama Bâ, So Long a Letter
They were full of suspicion and wonder, which I had grown to recognize as two very dangerous things.
— Erin Forbes, Fire & Ice: The Elementals
The amount of books or films or series which are you going to watch doesn't matter as far as long you understand all of them and keep track of all them.
— Deyth Banger
We can read a good spiritual book in search of information or in search of God. We will find only what we're looking for.
— Ron Brackin
When you read a line that is just so well-written you just close the book and stare at the wall for a minute.
— Anonymous
Books should not be loved selfishly. Neither books nor anything else, in fact.
— Marie-Sabine Roger, Das Labyrinth der Wörter
Shelly shook her head and made sure she had plenty of space so that she wouldn’t hit anything. As many times before, she kept the hoop close to her waist and then twirled it with small, tight bursts of speed. As the hoop gathered in momentum it started to give off a hum that soon took on a light blue illumination far brighter than the streetlamps. It was so bright, that it lit up the entire backyard.
— Nathan Reese Maher, Lights Out: Book 2
Reading is the life-saving water for our minds. Drink pure words as much as you need and remain alive!
— Munia Khan
Some looks are heavier than the thickest books because they carry the saddest stories of life!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Speak peace unto the world and good souls will stand.
— L.T. Hill, Dollhead Corporation
I hope that when the characters in my novels dream beyond their current circumstance, it inspires the reader to do the same.
— Kristine Scarrow, If This Is Home
It comes a point in which you don't know if you write books or the books write you
— Robin Sacredfire
Mary's reading list betrayed her passion for forensics and detective novels. There were so many scientific journals and books randomly strewn around her little one-room apartment that it looked like the Great White Hurracane had struck inside.It's all part of my decorating scheme Mary would quip. This may look like the work of a slob, but if you look closer, you'll realize it's my way of giving color to an awfully drab floor.
— Lawrence H. Levy, Second Street Station
For me, every book is an individual with its own identity and has to be nurtured and taken care of, so that it may survive for a longer period.
— Anurag Shourie, Half A Shadow
Second hand books had so much life in them. They'd lived, sometimes in many homes, or maybe just one. They'd been on airplanes, traveled to sunny beaches, or crowded into a backpack and taken high up a mountain where the air thinned."Some had been held aloft tepid rose-scented baths, and thickened and warped with moisture. Others had child-like scrawls on the acknowledgement page, little fingers looking for a blank space to leave their mark. Then there were the pristine novels, ones that had been read carefully, bookmarks used, almost like their owner barely pried the pages open so loathe were they to damage their treasure.I loved them all.And I found it hard to part with them. Though years of book selling had steeled me. I had to let them go, and each time made a fervent wish they'd be read well, and often.Missy, my best friend, said I was completely cuckoo, and that I spent too much time alone in my shadowy shop, because I believed my books communicated with me. A soft sigh here, as they stretched their bindings when dawn broke, or a hum, as they anticipated a customer hovering close who might run a hand along their cover, tempting them to flutter their pages hello. Books were fussy when it came to their owners, and gave off a type of sound, an almost imperceptible whirr, when the right person was near. Most people weren't aware that books chose us, at the time when we needed them.
— Rebecca Raisin, The Little Bookshop on the Seine
Peace washed through her soul in the old store surrounded by thousands of books. This was her church and her place of worship.
— A.W. Exley
It is like reading two books, one with each eye, and understanding them both.
— Dexter Palmer, The Dream of Perpetual Motion
There's nothing I like better than a good book discussion with someone who can hold up his end of the argument.
— Stephen King, Finders Keepers
I asked of the limitless sunshineHow to shine with the dawn's glowing light;No answer came back from the sunshine, But my soul heard a whisper, "Burn bright!
— K. Balmont
Every page should explode, either because of its staggering absurdity, the enthusiasm of its principles, or its typography.
— Tristan Tzara, Manifesti del dadaismo
Then what is the purpose of the Library?" Vale asked."To save books," Irene said firmly.
— Genevieve Cogman, The Invisible Library
For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor... To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves.
— William Wordsworth, Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
Books that have been owned by someone for many years for a specific purpose carry not just memories, (that is obvious), they also reveal their owner's true values; for the books we own may indicate something about us very different from what we think.
— Robert D. Kaplan, In Europe's Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond
Simply put, I love books, physical books. I own so many--many of which I have not read (yet). I just need to have them . On shelves. In piles. In random conference tote bags. Paper magazines and newspapers too. Some call it clutter. I call it cozy. It's comforting to know I am surrounded by pages of stories. And, thus, by storytellers.
— Donna Talarico, Selected Memories: Five Years of Hippocampus Magazine
This is not an easy time in which to live. That does not mean that it has to be a difficult time to love...
— Brandon Sanderson
Words matter . . . They really do.
— Dorothea Benton Frank, All the Single Ladies
You've got the look of a girl who's no stranger to the page, I can tell. You got words in your soul. ...The books we love, they love us back. And just as we mark our places in the pages, those pages leave their marks on us. I can see it in you, sure as I see it in me. You're a daughter of words. A girl with a story to tell.
— Jay Kristoff, Nevernight
She felt something similar, but worse in a way, about hundreds and hundreds of books she’d read, novels, biographies, occasional books, about music and art—she could remember nothing about them at all, so that it seemed rather pointless even to say that she had read them; such claims were things people set great store by but she hardly supposed they recalled any more than she did. Sometimes a book persisted as a coloured shadow at the edge of sight, as vague and unrecapturable as something seen in the rain from a passing vehicle; looked at directly it vanished altogether. Sometimes there were atmospheres, even the rudiments of a scene; a man in an office looking over Regent’s Park, rain in the street outside—a little blurred etching of a situation she would never, could never, trace back to its source in a novel she had read some time, she thought, in the past thirty years.
— Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child
Give me a book,” she said. “A book of sermons, anything.”“What do you want a book for?”“I want words. I’ve got to have more words. I was kept stupid on purpose.
— Hilary Mantel, Vacant Possession
When this book is mould,And a book of manyWaiting to be soldFor a casual penny,In a little open case,In a street unclean and cluttered,Where a heavy mud is spatteredFrom the passing drays,Stranger, pause and look;From the dust of agesLift this little book,Turn the tattered pages,Read me, do not let me die!Search the fading letters, findingSteadfast in the broken bindingAll that once was I!
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems
If you have carefully examined hundred people you met in your life journey, it means that you have read hundred different books! Every person you know is a book; world is full of walking books; some are boring, some are marvellous, some are weak, some are powerful, but they are all useful because they all carry different experiences of different paths!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
One is never too young for fine literature . . .
— Elin Hilderbrand, The Rumor
...Every life contains a novel.
— Elin Hilderbrand, The Rumor
I don't spend money on books. I write them myself.
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
Those who spend the greater part of their time in reading or writing books are, of course, apt to take rather particular notice of accumulations of books when they come across them. They will not pass a stall, a shop, or even a bedroom-shelf without reading some title, and if they find themselves in an unfamiliar library, no host need trouble himself further about their entertainment.
— M.R. James
And yeah, I had to go to therapy to get over my childhood issues and work through my shit but you know what I found when I was done? I still liked having my ass smacked, my hair pulled and being told to get on my knees like a good little girl because that’s my fucking right as a woman. And screw anyone that has a problem with it."-Beth Anderson, The Missing Orchid
— Fia Black, The Missing Orchid
over the decadesher books becamesuch a part of herthatthe ink somehow escapedher veins & bloomedher favorite words & imagesonto her skin.nowthe worldwould have no doubt:she was thepageboundgirl- page to skin
— Amanda Lovelace, The Princess Saves Herself in this One
What makes human life meaningful? I still felt literature provided the best account of the life of the mind, while neuroscience laid down the most elegant rules of the brain.
— Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
The story was heavy in her hands, the book spread open like legs, the letters very small i spite of describing such a big moment
— Natalia Jaster, Touch
Reading is a breezy journey to enjoy, not a whirlwind to escape!
— Balroop Singh
She would sit with picture books in her little lap before she even knew how to read, studying the writing as though all the mystery and wonder of the world were contained in the strange, indecipherable symbols.
— Molly Ringwald, When it Happens to You
The things of the world fell by the wayside . . . but literature was eternal.
— Stephen King, Finders Keepers
The night is about to lull everything and everyone to sleep. I stretch myself at the window and open it so that the books can breathe fresh damp air. I suspect that books need to breathe like people, and I think they tolerate damp better than people say. There is no doubt that they stare rather sadly at the trees out in the garden, as if they have a vague recollection of relationship with them, and sighs are borne from the pages to the damp trunks and branches.I begin to sigh too, for I feel that people are like trees that move, trees that have lost their roots and are always in search of the soil. I have a hazy idea that humans have come from trees that broke off from their roots in a wild whirlwind eons ago - that is my thory of evolution.
— Gyrðir Elíasson
The Pleiades and northern lights are still above the mountain. The mountain is in the east, and on its slopes there are reindeer. Reindeer always remind me of trees that have taken to moving. They remind me even more of trees than people do. In the distant past, reindeer were trees as people were, but they haven't come such a long way from their origins, and the branches can be seen although they no longer bear leaves.I have my bedtime book in my hand and my pocket light and walk toward the mountain over the edges of the moorland in rubber boots. The book is a relative of mine, I feel; it is made out of trees and human thought, and thus the relationship becomes twofold. These are ancient poems that I am taking to the mountains and the reindeer.
— Gyrðir Elíasson
Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
1. Be Impeccable With Your WordSpeak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love. 2. Don't Take Anything PersonallyNothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering. 3. Don't Make AssumptionsFind the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life. 4. Always Do Your BestYour best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.
— Miguel Ruiz
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.Where there is hatred, let me sow love,Where there is injury, pardon;Where there is doubt, faith;Where there is despair, hope;Where there is darkness, light;And where there is sadness, joy.O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved, as to love.For it is in giving that we receive,It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
— Francis of Assisi
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, and must empty ourselves. Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love than in your weakness.
— Mother Teresa
I don't profess any re
—  I don't think it’s possible that there is a God
My heart is so smallit's almost invisible.How can You place such big sorrows in it?"Look," He answered,"your eyes are even smaller,yet they behold the world.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
If you obsess over whether you are making the right decision, you are basically assuming that the universe will reward you for one thing and punish you for another.The universe has no fixed agenda. Once you make any decision, it works around that decision. There is no right or wrong, only a series of possibilities that shift with each thought, feeling, and action that you experience. If this sounds too mystical, refer again to the body. Every significant vital sign- body temperature, heart rate, oxygen consumption, hormone level, brain activity, and so on- alters the moment you decide to do anything… decisions are signals telling your body, mind, and environment to move in a certain direction.
— Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life
Crying is one of the highest devotional songs. One who knows crying, knows spiritual practice. If you can cry with a pure heart, nothing else compares to such a prayer. Crying includes all the principles of Yoga.
— Kripalvanandji
The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
I am convinced that the jealous, the angry, the bitter and the egotistical are the first to race to the top of mountains. A confident person enjoys the journey, the people they meet along the way and sees life not as a competition. They reach the summit last because they know God isn’t at the top waiting for them. He is down below helping his followers to understand that the view is glorious where ever you stand.
— Shannon L. Alder
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
— Susan B. Anthony
You are one thing only. You are a Divine Being. An all-powerful Creator. You are a Deity in jeans and a t-shirt, and within you dwells the infinite wisdom of the ages and the sacred creative force of All that is, will be and ever was.
— Anthon St. Maarten, Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny
As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. … That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.
— Anthony de Mello
These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness, and worship without awareness.
— Anthony de Mello
There were silences in my head. I could abandon myself completely to the pleasure of multiple relationships, to the beauty of the day, to the joys of the day. It was as if a cancer in me had ceased gnawing me. The cancer of introspection.
— Anaïs Nin
When a woman rises up in glory, her energy is magnetic and her sense of possibility contagious.
— Marianne Williamson, A Woman's Worth
Reality is a projection of your thoughts or the things you habitually think about.
— Stephen Richards
Om is not just a sound or vibration. It is not just a symbol. It is the entire cosmos, whatever we can see, touch, hear and feel. Moreover, it is all that is within our perception and all that is beyond our perception. It is the core of our very existence. If you think of Om only as a sound, a technique or a symbol of the Divine, you will miss it altogether. Om is the mysterious cosmic energy that is the substratum of all the things and all the beings of the entire universe. It is an eternal song of the Divine. It is continuously resounding in silence on the background of everything that exists.
— Amit Ray, Om Chanting and Meditation
Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning and purpose to our lives.
— Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
Beautify your inner dialogue. Beautify your inner world with love light and compassion. Life will be beautiful.
— Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
I don't understand why people insist on pitting concepts of evolution and creation against each other. Why can't they see that spiritualism and science are one? That bodies evolve and souls evolve and the universe is a fluid package that marries them both in a wonderful package called a human being. What's wrong with that idea?
— Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
An awake heart is like a sky that pours light.
You have been to hell, Ketut?"He smiled. Of course he's been there.What's it like in hell?" Same like in heaven," he said.He saw my confusion and tried to explain. "Universe is a circle, Liss."He said. "To up, to down -- all same, at end."I remembered an old Christian mystic notion: As above, so below. I asked. "Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?"Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell, you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss." He laughed.Same-same," he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy in journey."I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is.. " Love, too," he said. Ketut laughed again, "Always so difficult for young people to understand this!
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Most people are slow to champion love because they fear the transformation it brings into their lives. And make no mistake about it: love does take over and transform the schemes and operations of our egos in a very mighty way.
— Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry
There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Your greatest awakening comes, when you are aware about your infinite nature.
— Amit Ray, Meditation: Insights and Inspirations
PTSD is a whole-body tragedy, an integral human event of enormous proportions with massive repercussions.
— Susan Pease Banitt
Come from the heart, the true heart, not the head. When in doubt, choose the heart. This does not mean to deny your own experiences and that which you have empirically learned through the years. It means to trust your self to integrate intuition and experience. There is a balance, a harmony to be nurtured, between the head and the heart. When the intuition rings clear and true, loving impulses are favored.
— Brian L. Weiss, Messages from the Masters: Tapping into the Power of Love
Feel nothing, know nothing, do nothing, have nothing, give up all to God, and say utterly, 'Thy will be done.' We only dream this bondage. Wake up and let it go.
— Swami Vivekananda
The sea is only the embodiment of asupernatural and wonderful existence.It is nothing but love and emotionit is the ‘Living Infinite... 
— Jules Verne
When you catch yourself slipping into a pool of negativity, notice how it derives from nothing other than resistance to the current situation.
— Donna Quesada, Buddha in the Classroom: Zen Wisdom to Inspire Teachers
Spirituality does not lie in meditating the body of an ex-master. Spirituality exists in mediating on your own inner body.
— Amit Ray, Meditation: Insights and Inspirations
And if he had judged her harshly? If her life were a simple rosary of hours, her life simple and strange as a bird's life, gay in the morning, restless all day, tired at sundown? Her heart simple and willful as a bird's heart?
— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Thomas Merton wrote, “there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
— Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
It takes darkness to be aware of the light.
— Treasure Tatum
Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.
— Alice Walker, Living by the Word
Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.
— Meister Eckhart
At that moment of realization (that union with God is always present), that's when God let me go, let me slide through His fingers with this last compassionate, unspoken message:You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
God loved us before he made us and his love has never diminished and never shall. 
— Julian of Norwich
There are things you can’t reach. ButYou can reach out to them, and all day long.The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god.And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier.I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing aroundAs though with your arms open.
— Mary Oliver
When a woman conceives her true self, a miracle occurs and life around her begins again.
— Marianne Williamson
It is not what to do, but how much love we put into the doing. We can do not greats, only small things with great love." - Mother Theresa
— Mother Teresa
Courage is the hallmark of spirituality. Courage comes when you love yourself for who you are.
— Amit Ray
The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.
— Confucius, Confucian Analects, The Great Learning  The Doctrine of the Mean
Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.
— Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Never worry alone. When anxiety grabs my mind, it is self-perpetuating. Worrisome thoughts reproduce faster than rabbits, so one of the most powerful ways to stop the spiral of worry is simply to disclose my worry to a friend... The simple act of reassurance from another human being [becomes] a tool of the Spirit to cast out fear -- because peace and fear are both contagious.
— John Ortberg Jr., The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You
Live simply. Deepest joy is like a flower....beautiful in essence.
— Tony Samara
Within each of us is a light, awake, encoded in the fibers of our existence. Divine ecstasy is the totality of this marvelous creation experienced in the hearts of humanity
— Tony Samara
Just as in the body, eye and ear develop as organs of perception, as senses for bodily processes, so does a man develop in himself soul and spiritual organs of perception through which the soul and spiritual worlds are opened to him. For those who do not have such higher senses, these worlds are dark and silent, just as the bodily world is dark and silent for a being without eyes and ears.
— Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos