A few days ago
We Watch Football

Help finding a good quote?

I am writing a research paper on the development of the paperback book and how it affected society. I am looking for a quote that points out the importance of reading/books. The longer the quote the better (within reason). also i will need to cite the source, so provide as much info as possible about where the quote came from.

Thanks all.

Top 4 Answers
A few days ago
cold_fearrrr

Favorite Answer

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves; like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924)

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6 years ago
Susana
If you need help finding a good quote in a book and you really don’t want to read the book. Use a trick I learned skim the book, after look at pages that looked that they had a GOOD quote in it. Then just find in those pages a line that speaks to you
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A few days ago
xraytech
Try looking in a copy of John Bartlett’s “Familiar Quotations”. Undoubtedly there are many quotations concerning the value of books and reading in that one. In addition, the quotes are annotated with their source.
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A few days ago
Eric212
use http://www.bartleby.com/ to find a quote you like, but do not quote Barlett’s. Quote who they quote…

QUOTATION: “Classic.” A book which people praise and don’t read.

ATTRIBUTION: Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910), U.S. author. Following the Equator, ch. 25 (1897).

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