Joseph > Joseph 's Quotes

“I cannot live without books.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
― Cicero

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.

The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

{Letter from the commissioners, John Adams & Thomas Jefferson, to John Jay, 28 March 1786}”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
― Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the life & writings of Benjamin Franklin

“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
― Salman Rushdie

“Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.”
― Clare Luce Booth

“You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.”
― Indira Gandhi

“An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver

“Cats are cats . . . the world over!
These intelligent, peace-loving, four-footed friends- who are without prejudice, without hate, without greed- may someday teach us something.
-James Mackintosh Qwilleran”
― Lilian Jackson Braun, The Cat Who Saw Stars

“Never laugh at live dragons.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”
― Bill Keane

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?”
― Mark Twain

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”
― Heinrich Heine

“I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'Where's the self-help section?' She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.”
― George Carlin

“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
― Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

“We live for books.”
― Umberto Eco

“Books, the children of the brain.”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub and Other Writings

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.”
― Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard

“As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Voila! Bookshelves!”
― Jan Karon

“I hate when people ask what a book is about. People who read for plot, people who suck out the story like the cream filling in an Oreo, should stick to comic strips and soap operas. . . . Every book worth a damn is about emotions and love and death and pain. It's about words. It's about a man dealing with life. Okay?”
― J.R. Moehringer