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Unread Books Quotes

Browse 28 quotes about Unread Books.

Unread Books Quotes

“I wish my collection were larger for your benefit and my credit. Honestly, my attention generally diverts elsewhere. I own a few books, but have more than I'll personally ever read." "Is that not a sign of a good library?" Miss Elizabeth replied. "To run out of something new to read would be far more unfortunate than having too many unread books.”

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Book:Pride and Prejudice in Space
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“Pride of reading is a terrible thing. There are certain literary sets in which the book is an instrument of tyranny. If you have not read it you are made to feel unspeakably abject, for the book you have not read is always the one book in the world that you should have read. It is the sole test of literary insight, good taste and mental worth. To confess that you have not read it is to expose yourself as an illiterate person. It is like admitting that you have never eaten with a fork.”

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Book:Imaginary Obligations
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“A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song.”

BookLightSongBlackBehindsExistenceDarknessFirePiecesBuildingWindPagesShotsEmptyMovedFilledNotesStormEveningDesertStillnessAshesTruestDeliberationCadenceFlareSwirlsDaintyUnread BooksPrancing
Book:Frost and Fire
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“I think overtly political novels - those that never transcend or contest their author's conscious intentions and prejudices - are problematic. This is not just true of the innumerable unread books in the socialist realist tradition, but also of novels that carry the burden of conservative ideologies, like Guerrillas, Naipaul's worst book, where the author's disgust for a certain kind of black activist and white liberal is overpowering.”

ThinkingKindBookPoliticalCertainBlackWhiteNovelWorstConsciousTraditionPrejudiceIntentionConservativeBurdenIdeologyActivistDisgustingSocialistContestsRealistOverpoweringGuerrillasUnread Books
Author:Pankaj Mishra
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“‎"It’s not as if I don’t have anything to read; there’s a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room I’ve been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust that’s afflicted me most of my life.”

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Author:Lewis Buzbee
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“He is no true reader who has not experienced the reproachful fascination of the great shelves of unread books, of the libraries at night of which Borges is the fabulist. He is no reader who has not heard, in his inward ear, the call of the hundreds of thousands, of the millions of volumes which stand in the stacks of the British Library asking to be read. For there is in each book a gamble against oblivion, a wager against silence, which can be won only when the book is opened again (but in contrast to man, the book can wait centuries for the hazard of resurrection.)”

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Author:George Steiner
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“Those who aspire to the status of cultured individuals visit bookstores with trepidation, overwhelmed by the immensity of all they have not read. They buy something that theyve been told is good, make an unsuccessful attempt to read it, and when they have accumulated half a dozen unread books, feel so bad that they are afraid to buy more. In contrast, the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.”

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Book:So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance
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