Best century & reading Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century [...] lies where we have never suspected it [...] The only palliative is [...] by reading old books. [...] the books of the future would be just as good [...], but unfortunately we cannot get at them.”

May Book Would Be Lying Reading Century Characteristics Blindness Twentieth Century Old Books

Author:C. S. Lewis

“We tried some experiments in mind reading which were not very successful. Think mind reading contrary to common sense, wise provision of the Bon Dieu that we cannot read each others minds, twould stop civilization and everybody would take to the woods. In fifty or hundred thousand centuries when mankind have become perfect by evolution then perhaps this sense could be developed with safety to the state.”

“Literacy is much more than an educational priority - it is the ultimate investment in the future and the first step towards all the new forms of literacy required in the twenty-first century. We wish to see a century where every child is able to read and to use this skill to gain autonomy.”

“The effort of painting from life has cost my models a great deal of physical discomfort, and cost me a great deal of money in model fees... I have wanted to make the camera obsolete... because, in my reading about early 20th century art, I found that the most frequently used argument made in favor of abstraction was that the camera made realist painting obsolete.”

Art Made Wanted Used Reading Found Deals Effort Century Painting Cost Photography Models Argument Cameras Favors 20th Century Abstraction Discomfort Obsolete Realist Fees

Author:Philip Pearlstein

“When one read's Kierkegaard's profound analyses of anxiety and despair or Nietzsche's amazingly acute insights into the dynamics of resentment and the guilt and hostility which accompany repressed emotional powers, one might pinch oneself to realize that one is reading works written in the last century and not some new contemporary psychological analysis.”

Source: The Discovery of Being

“J.L. Moreno was a pioneer of twentieth-century theater and psychotherapy. A remarkable work, Impromptu Man should be required reading for therapists and dramatists alike.”

Men Should Reading Century Theater Remarkable Twentieth Century Pioneers Therapists Psychotherapy

Author:Jeffrey K. Zeig

“Blessed is he who invented recording! But what a pity that he was not born centuries earlier! Think only of all that we would be able to hear and therefore understand better. Oh, the unending research in libraries and museums, the readings and collations of texts, the maddening desire to know the truth!”

Thinking Knows Would Be Able Desire Reading Born Music Century Research Blessed Library Pity Museums Unending

Author:Wanda Landowska

“here are the top three global resources getting scarcer in the twenty-first century: ozone layer, rain forest, people eager to read the fiction of others. That's right, folks. For the first time in I believe written history, there are far more fiction writers on earth than fiction readers.”

Source: A Year in Van Nuys

“Well into the 19th century there were pronouncements from just about every branch of science and medicine that reading, writing, and thinking were dangerous for women. Articles in the Lancet declared that women's brains would burst and their uteruses atrophy if they engaged in any form of rigorous thinking. The famous physician J.D. Kellogg insisted that novel reading was the greatest cause of uterine disease among young women and urged parents to protect their daughters from the dreaded consequences of print.”

“My general impression about people like Steve Gould and Carl Sagan and so on is that when they disappear as individuals and are no longer appearing on the stage and they are no longer writing, that their lifetime of acknowledgement by the general reading public is not very long... There were many people in the 19th century who were equally famous people who gave working man's lectures, supporters of Darwin, we as scholars know their names but the general public never heard of them.”

“The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.”

Men Young Dies Reading Literature Century Willing Independence Young Man Tension Relaxed Nineteenth Century Manchester Poland Puritan Voluptuous Willing To Die

Book:The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews

Source: The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews

“F.R. Leavis's "eat up your broccoli" approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy. If reading a novel--for theeighteenth century reader, the most frivolous of diversions--did not, by the middle of the twentieth century, make you a better person in some way, then you might as well flush the offending volume down the toilet, which was by far the best place for the undigested excreta of dubious nourishment.”

Source: Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings

“Ho Kyuns poetry is in the tradition of his master, the incomparable Tu Fu, while remaining fully his own. Writing nine centuries later, Hos poetry strikes many parallels--the experiences of war and exile and constant struggle-- and his voice is similarly humane. This is rich and enlightening reading.”

Writing War Reading Voice Struggle Rich Century Masters Tradition Constant Strikes Nine Poetry Is Exile Parallels Humane Enlightening Incomparable Constant Struggle

Author:Sam Hamill

“I did a couple of writing seminars in Canada with high school kids. These were the bright kids; they all have computers, but they can't spell. Because spell-check won't [help] you if you don't know through from threw. I told them, "If you can read in the 21st century, you own the world." Because you learn to write from reading.”

Ifs Knows World Writing Helping Kids School Reading Century Couple Computer High School Checks Canada Spells 21st Century Seminars Spell Check

Author:Stephen King

“I really, really wanted to write. I loved language. I loved literature. I loved reading. I never read a foreign language, I'm afraid, but I loved Flaubert. I loved the 19th-century classics. I love Thomas Hardy. I wanted to be a goof on a bus, but I wanted to write more.”

Writing Wanted Reading Literature Language Century Bus 19th Century Hardy Foreign Language Goofs

Author:Robert Stone

“For someone who loves literature, and all books on principle, being asked to name three titles over a half century of serious reading is akin to asking one to recall their three favorite sunsets.”

Book Three Reading Literature Names Half Principles Century Serious Asking Titles Sunset Recalls Love Literature

Author:Thomas Steinbeck

“Most of what I read is for reviewing purposes or related to something I want to write about. It's slightly utilitarian. I definitely miss that sense of being a disinterested reader who's reading purely for the pleasure of imagining his way into emotional situations and vividly realized scenes in nineteenth-century France or late nineteenth-century Russia.”

Way Want Writing Purpose Reading Pleasure Situation Century Missing Emotional Reader Scene Late Russia France Related Nineteenth Century Disinterested Utilitarian

Author:Pankaj Mishra

“Recently I was reading somewhere or other an Italian curio-dealer who attempted to sell a 17th century crucifix to J.P. Morgan. Inside it was concealed a stiletto. What a perfect symbol of the Christian religion.”

Christian Reading Perfect Century Sells Symbols Italian Concealed Dealer 17th Century Stilettos

Book:The complete works of George Orwell

Source: The complete works of George Orwell

“I have been interested in the 12th century since my 20s when it was very fashionable to say of anybody with whom you disagreed, which was basically anybody over the age of 30, "One of the great minds of the 12th century", and one day I thought, "I don't know anything about the 12 century." So I started buying books, reading about it, and I discovered it was a period of great flowering, it was a Renaissance before what we think is the Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance of the 16th century.”

Thinking Knows Mind Has Beens Book Age Reading Century Periods One Day Buying Italian Fashionable Book Reading Renaissance Flowering Great Minds Italian Renaissance Buying Books

Author:Yitzhak Rabin

“Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in Government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.”

“I definitely have a Luddite's approach to what's going on. I find that as I get older, I get stupider. For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust. I've been hanging out a bit with Lou Reed, and he's the complete opposite. He's into technology and is kind of like a toddler, compared to me, who's like an old 19th-century widow or something.”

Kind Reading Bits Technology Century Approach Opposites Harder Hanging Out Widows 19th Century Iphone Reeds Toddler Faust Complete Opposites

Author:Rufus Wainwright

“I keep on reading the Morning Star newspaper to see if there's any hope, but it seems to be in the 19th century; it seems to be written for dropped-out, middle-aged liberals.”

Ifs Seems Reading Stars Morning Written Middle Century Newspapers 19th Century Middle Aged

Author:John Lennon

“As Commander-in-Chief, I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the Armed Forces of the United States. Throughout the centuries, men of many faiths and diverse origins have found in the Sacred Book words of wisdom, counsel, and inspiration. It is a fountain of strength...an aid in attaining the highest aspiration of the human soul.”

“Grasp the opportunity with both hands to feel really very special as an Indian reading these quotes on the Indian Independence Day. A number of famous and reputed persons have thrown some light on the chapter of Indian Independence. India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border!"”

Feels Persons Hands Light Reading Opportunity Numbers Special Century India Independence Soldier China Indian Borders Thrown Chapters Independence Day Indian Independence Day

Author:Hu Shih

“It's strange that in an age when we pride ourselves on our independence of thought we meekly submit without further question to the declaration of a clearly unbalanced nineteenth century philosopher that God is dead! That's cheeky, of course - and one rarely comes away from reading Nietzsche without learning something new and significant. He's certainly FAR more unsettling for faith than any contemporary atheist I know of.”

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Century Quotes