essential reading Quotes

great books are the ones we need

Michael Harvey should be read by all.

Books are infinite in number and time is short. The secret of knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it.

Do you know a book that you are willing to put under your head for a pillow when you lie dying? Very well; that is the book you want to study while you are living. There is but one such book in the world.

Since the choice of what we curl up with is often crucial for our solace and sanity, we need to learn how to nurture the talent of selection. Book browsing is a meditative art...Books are as essential as breathing.

I cannot imagine life without books any more than I can imagine life without breathing.

Orville Schell and John Delury have delivered a brilliantly original and essential book: the road map to China’s quest for national salvation... Vivid, literate, and brimming with insights, Wealth and Power deserves to become a classic.

Unintended Consequences is full of substance, it is one of the must-read books of the year, and once I finish it I will be giving it a second read through right away.

Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.

You cannot live this life anymore without the ability to read.

Again and again, Primo Levi's work is described as indispensable, essential, necessary. None of those terms overstate the case, but they do prepare readers new to Levi for a forbiddingly educative experience, making him a writer unlike all others and the experience of reading him a chore. Which it isn't.

I'm never ashamed to read a book twice or as many times as I want. We never expect to drink a glass of water just once in our lives. A book can be that essential, too.

Books seem so much more - much more sacred to me, and more important and essential, than they were when I was young.

A small number of choice books are sufficient.

It seems to me that literature is giving way a little bit to the immediacy of other diversions, other forms of entertainment. What will it be in fifty years? I don't know. Will there be printed books? Probably, but I'm not sure. There's always going to be literature, though. I believe that. I think literature has a way of getting deep into people and being essential. Literature has its own powers.

Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you you have omitted every word that he can spare.

One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on your own desk.