This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously.
bookquotes
It was a subtle refinement of God to learn Greek when he wished to write a book – and that he did not learn it better.
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?
Books are a narcotic.
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.
Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks — already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.
It is possible to argue that the really influential book is not that which converts ten millions of casual readers, but rather that which converts the very few who, at any given moment, succeed in seizing power. Marx and Sorel have been influential in the modern world, not so much because they were best-sellers (Sorel in particular was not at all a widely read author), but because among their few readers were two men, called respectively Lenin and Mussolini.
A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.
I believe in the value of the book, which keeps something irreplaceable, and in the necessity of fighting to secure its respect.