Books Quote by Thomas de Quincey

“Reverence for what somebody said is a stultifying quality: there's a damned sight too much reverence in the world. Kant thought things not because…

— W. Somerset Maugham

“Who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior, (And what he brings what needs he elsewhere…

— John Milton

“Who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep versed in…

— George Fillmore Swain

“Kant is the last person in the world whom we should read on Kant.”

— Will Durant

“It is certain that a book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.”

— T.S. Eliot

“If we're genuinely interested in a book we can even bring ourselves to be greatful when others draw our attention to things we've missed…

— Ian Watt

And a more foolish notion can scarcely be imagined, it being obvious that the reader is only informed of what the writer wishes him…

— Iain Pears

“Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In reality every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical…

— Marcel Proust

“Just as the universal family of gifted writers transcends national barriers, so is the gifted reader a universal figure, not subject to spatial or…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“A sensible person does not read a novel as a task. He reads it as a diversion. He is prepared to interest himself in…

— W. Somerset Maugham

“My ideal state as a reader when I’m reading other people is feeling I’m vaguely wasting my time when I’m not reading that novel.”

— Ian McEwan