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A Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All A Quotes

“A good book is like a guest. They stay with you for a while, and when they leave, you are still smiling, and thinking they left a little too soon. You will always remember their pleasant company; things they said that moved you and maybe changed your perspective You plan to invite them again so you can spend quality time together and when you invite them in, you are full of anticipation about the new discoveries you will make when you are together.”

“A good book is never exhausted. It goes on whispering to you from the wall. Books perfume and give weight to a room. A bookcase is as good as a view, as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms, fogs, zephyrs. I read about a family whose apartment consists of a series of spaces so strictly planned that they are obliged to give away their books as soon as they've read them. I think they have misunderstood the way books work. Reading a book is only the first step in the relationship. After you've finished it, the book enters on its real career. It stand there as a badge, a blackmailer, a monument, a scar. It's both a flaw in the room, like a crack in the plaster, and a decoration. The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait. - in "About books; recoiling, rereading, retelling", The New York Times, February 22, 1987”

“A good book is the very essence of a good man. His virtues survive in it, while the foibles and faults of his actual life are forgotten. All the goodly company of the excellent and great sit around my table, or look down on me from yonder shelves, waiting patiently to answer my questions and enrich me with their wisdom. A precious book is a foretaste of immortality.”

“A good bricklayer can lay his last brick of the day, point up, wash up, turn his back on his day’s work, and every single one of the joints between the bricks will be exactly 15mm. Why? Because he’s done it so many times, that’s why. It’s repetitive. It’s probably the same for a good hairdresser, a mechanic, a musician, a prostitute and I’m sure Masai Warriors hunting lions in the heart of the Masai Mara.”

“A good bus rider likes to take the bus, looking out the window, talking to others on the way. The trip on the bus is fun; it is not just about getting there. A good painter tries to think about what she is feeling inside her imagination, her thoughts. It is not just about painting what something looks like. A good science student likes thinking about ideas, tries to find out how things work. It is not just about learning one tiny piece of the universe.”