Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must lay it down and commence living on its hint… What I began by reading I must finish by acting.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution – such call I good books.

Classic – A book which people praise and don’t read.

What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

The last book I read was the book I’ve been rereading most of my life, The Fountainhead.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public.

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.