Join BookBrowse today and get access to free books, our twice monthly digital magazine, and more.

Famous literary quotes with a biography of each quoted person.

BookBrowse's Favorite Literary Quotes

Page 1 of 6

At times, our own light goes out, and is rekindled by a spark from another person.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Be sincere, be brief, be seated

Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant – it tends to get worse.

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

Beware the man of one book

Books are the carriers of civilization

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home: but unlike charity, it should end there.

Chance favors only the prepared mind

Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today.

Choose an author as you would a friend

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Courage - a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.

Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go into your library and read every book.

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

Every good journalist has a novel in him - which is an excellent place for it.

Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think the university stifles writers...

Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim

Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.

Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success

From the moment I picked your book up...

Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.

Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.

Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil...

Great political questions stir the deepest nature of one-half the nation, but they pass far above and over the heads of the other half.

Happiness belongs to the self sufficient

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

Harvard is the storehouse of knowledge because the freshmen bring so much in and the graduates take so little out.

Support BookBrowse

Join our inner reading circle, go ad-free and get way more!

Find out more


Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: Anita de Monte Laughs Last
    Anita de Monte Laughs Last
    by Xochitl Gonzalez
    Brooklyn-based novelist Xochitl Gonzalez is an inspiring writer to follow. At forty, she decided to ...
  • Book Jacket: Icarus
    Icarus
    by K. Ancrum
    The titular protagonist of K. Ancrum's young adult novel Icarus lives a double life that mixes the ...
  • Book Jacket
    The Moon That Turns You Back
    by Hala Alyan
    The poignant, accessible poems in Palestinian American author Hala Alyan's fifth collection, The ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
Romantic Comedy
by Curtis Sittenfeld
A comedy writer's stance on love shifts when a pop star challenges her assumptions in this witty and touching novel.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung

    Eve J. Chung's debut novel recounts a family's flight to Taiwan during China's Communist revolution.

  • Book Jacket

    The Stolen Child
    by Ann Hood

    An unlikely duo ventures through France and Italy to solve the mystery of a child’s fate.

Win This Book
Win Only the Brave

Only the Brave by Danielle Steel

A powerful, sweeping historical novel about a courageous woman in World War II Germany.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F T a T

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.