Burning Books Quotes

1. "But the other half of my motivation came from farther back in my brain, in the curious part that I inherited. It came from the spot in my skull that feels the burning need to unravel puzzles, finish crosswords, indulge in Internet games, and read all the mystery books I can get my grubby little paws on. Like it or not, need it or not, and want it or not, I can't leave a good mystery alone."
Author: Cherie Priest

2. "ON THE RETURN OF A BOOKLENT TO A FRIEND I GIVE humble and hearty thanks for the safe return of this book which having endured the perils of my friend's bookcase, and the bookcases of my friend's friends, now returns to me in reasonably good condition. I GIVE humble and hearty thanks that my friend did not see fit to give this book to his infant as a plaything, nor use it as an ash-tray for his burning cigar, nor as a teething-ring for his mastiff. WHEN I lent this book I deemed it as lost: I was resigned to the bitterness of the long parting: I never thought to look upon its pages again. BUT NOW that my book is come back to me, I rejoice and am exceeding glad! Bring hither the fatted morocco and let us rebind the volume and set it on the shelf of honour: for this my book was lent, and is returned again. PRESENTLY, therefore, I may return some of the books that I myself have borrowed."
Author: Christopher Morley

3. "By burning Luther's books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men's minds of him."
Author: Desiderius Erasmus

4. "For a week she has been tormented, she burns to write something, gentle warmth emanates from her whole body, but still nothing comes of it. Besides, at the same time she is also busy burning old books, manuals, professional papers, theoretical volumes--because they keep her from doing the one thing that now seems urgent and right to her: shouting her loud hymn of ecstatic pleasure, breaching the tide of the old tongue's hard blare."
Author: Hélène Cixous

5. "Strauss's, for instance, which begins in the heavens. The artist doesn't ascend to glory, he appears in it, he already has it and the world is prepared to recognize him. Meteoric, like a comet—those are the phrases we apply, and it's true, it is a kind of burning. It makes them highly visible, and at the same time it consumes them, and it's only afterwards, when the brilliance is gone, when their bones are lying alongside those of lesser men, that one can really judge. I mean, there are famous works, renowned in antiquity, and today absolutely forgotten: books, buildings, works of art."
Author: James Salter

6. "Living wild species are like a library of books still unread. Our heedless destruction of them is akin to burning the library without ever having read its books."
Author: John Dingell

7. "In the wake of the British army's burning of the roughly 3,000 books belonging to Congress at Washington, Jefferson offered to sell the nation his own collection.42 There were 6,487 volumes in Jefferson's hands; in the words of the National Intelligencer, the library "for its selection, rarity and intrinsic value, is beyond all price."43,44 They formed the core of the new Library of Congress."
Author: Jon Meacham

8. "The burning of an author's books, imprisonment for opinion's sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time."
Author: Joseph Lewis

9. "In history, in a movie, in a book, you can always tell who the heroes are; they're the ones rushing into a burning building, giving crucial testimony inthe courtroom, refusing to step to the back of the bus. They're the ones whoact the way you hope you would, if the moment came to you.But the movies and the history books never tell you how they felt, thoseheroes, if they were angry or uncertain or afraid, if they had to think along time before they did the right thing, if they even knew what the rightthing was or just made a headlong guess, just leaped and hoped they landedinstead of falling. They never tell you what it's like to stand on thebrink, wishing you were somewhere--or someone--else, wishing the choice hadnever come your way and you could just go back to your safe, ordinary,everyday life.Because you know what else the books never say? Nobody, hero or not, reallywants to rush into a fire. Because fire burns."
Author: Kathe Koja

10. "And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."
Author: Kurt Vonnegut

11. "Tearing your clothes, burning your books and torturing yourself only prove that you are nothing but a wild creature."
Author: M.F. Moonzajer

12. "In 1891 the Brazilian Minister of Finance decreed the abolition of history; he ordered the destruction of every document which dealt in any way with slavery or the slave trade; a nation-wide burning of the books."
Author: Manu Herbstein

13. "Wildlife conservation is always a race against time. As zoologists and botanists explore new areas, scrabbling to record the mere existence of species before they become extinct, it's like someone hurrying through a burning library desperately trying to jot down some of the tittles of books that will now never be read."
Author: Mark Carwardine

14. "There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."
Author: Ray Bradbury

15. "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books."
Author: Sigmund Freud

16. "Pouring out liquor is like burning books."
Author: William Faulkner

17. "The censor pretends he is protecting tender hearts, shielding children from sex and violence, keeping the righteous in the right path, guarding against temptation, preserving virtue. How? by burning books, tearing out tongues, stretching necks, stoning women; through torture and imprisonment; by threats of violence against the victim's friends and family; by force-feeding his own people a philosophy not only false and wicked now but false and wicked the day it was first announced by some imaginary lord and used to purchase or preserve his privileges and hoodwink the world."
Author: William H. Gass

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