Forbidden Books Quotes

A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books. ~ Georg C. Lichtenberg

Henceforth it will be the task of this Sacred Congregation not only to examine carefully the books denounced to it, to prohibit them if necessary, and to grant permission for reading forbidden books, but also to supervise, ex officio, books that are being published, and to pass sentence on such as deserve to be prohibited. ~ Pope Pius XII

Brothers of the Second Order searched her house and found evidence of Deniers activity. Forbidden books, images of gods, herbs and candles, the usual stuff. Turned out she and her father were followers of the Sun and the Moon, a minor sect. They're pretty harmless mostly since they don't try to convert others to their heresy, but a Denier's a Denier. ~ Anthony Ryan

When the Viennese government compiled a Catalogue of Forbidden Books in 1765, so many Austrians used it as a reading guide that the Hapsburg censors were forced to include the Catalogue itself as a forbidden book. ~ Craig Nelson

Calling a book "Young Adult" is just a fancy way of saying the book is censored. ~ Oliver Markus

When Lafayette met him in 1775, the first volume of Raynal's 1770 History of the Two Indies had already been banned, which is to say it was a popular success, the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books being the unofficial bestseller list of the day. ~ Sarah Vowell

Have you ever found your heart's desire and then lost it? I had seen myself, a portrait of myself as a reader. My childhood: days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew, forbidden books read secretively late at night. Teenage years reading -trying to read- books I'd heard were important, Naked Lunch, and The Fountainhead, Ulysses and Women in Love ... It was as though I had dreamt the perfect lover, who vanished as I woke, leaving me pining and surly. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in class, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest. ~ Hermann Hesse

Books are open doors to other dimensions where everything is possible and nothing is forbidden. ~ Danny Tyran

there exists a deep gulf between genius and the teaching profession. Anyone with a touch of genius seems to his teachers a freak from the very first. As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in class, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest. A school master will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in class than a […] genius. […] His task is not to produce extravagant intellectuals but good Latinists, arimeticians and sober decent folk. […] We have the consolation that among true geniuses the wounds always heal. […] they create their art in spite of school. Once dead and enveloped by the comfortable nimbus of remoteness, they are paraded by the schoolmasters before other generations of students as showpieces and noble examples. […] [T]ime and again the ones who are detested by their teachers […] are afterwards the ones who add to society's treasure. ~ Hermann Hesse

Teachers dread nothing so much as unusual characteristics in precocious boys during the initial stages of their adolescence. A certain streak of genius makes an ominous impression on them, for there exists a deep gulf between genius and the teaching profession. Anyone with a touch of genius seems to his teachers a freak from the very first. As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in class, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest. A schoolmaster will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in his class than a single genius, and if you regard it objectively, he is of course right. His task is not to produce extravagant intellects but good Latinists, arithmeticians and sober decent folk. The question of who suffers more acutely at the other's hands - the teacher at the boy's, or vice versa - who is more of a tyrant, more of a tormentor, and who profanes parts of the other's soul, student or teacher, is something you cannot examine without remembering your own youth in anger and shame. yet that s not what concerns us here. We have the consolation that among true geniuses the wounds almost always heal. As their personalities develop, they create their art in spite of school. Once dead, and enveloped by the comfor ~ Hermann Hesse

I had seen myself, a portrait of myself as a reader. My childhood: hours spent in airless classrooms, days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew, forbidden books read secretively late at night. Teenage years reading - trying to read- books I'd heard were important, Naked Lunch and The Fountainhead, Ulysses and Women in Love. -The Night Bookmobile ~ Audrey Niffenegger

Contribute to charitable projects like the printing of spiritual books so that they can be sold at a lower price. Poor people will then be able to buy and read them. In this way we can help to cultivate spiritual culture in them also. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi

Everything we are given or learn or possess in any real sense - - the ability to play Beethoven sonata, write books, understand the principles of physics – is intended for one thing: to draw us closer to our selves. ~ Phyllis Theroux

Blake: So what am I missing in books that I can't get through real life experiences?
Evelyn: It's a form of escapism. I long to live in worlds I can only touch through the words of authors. And unfortunately, I don't know how to describe it. It's something you either know the feeling of, or you don't. ~ Rachel Hera

Jeffrey Archer's political career ended with his conviction and subsequent imprisonment (2001–2003) for perjury and perverting the course of justice, which followed his second resignation. He even suborned perjury from his wife and others. To buy books from this conman and criminal is a SIN. ~ Jeffrey Archer

Books have a way of finding their way into our lives, usually, right when we need them the most. ~ Richard P. Denney

I've never thought much of strictly organised and methodical study. You can't arrange a library in alphabetical order until you've collected one. ~ Walter Moers

Still, Temple has no illusions concerning her library's impact. Her books won't lift anyone from their low station. They won't right wrongs or save wandering souls from perdition or fill grumbling stomachs. But they might let a few scraps of sunlight fall into some lean, desolate lives. And that's something.

'The Greatest Library of Estevan, Saskatchewan ~ Michael Christie

A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.
[Letters of Note; Troy (MI, USA) Public Library, 1971] ~ E.B. White

I don't think if you're serious about literature your library is filled with award-winning books. ~ Andrew Wylie

I can't imagine Hunger Games, even with its very popular books, being nearly a success that it's been without Jen Lawrence being the perfect person to play that role - a very modern celebrity, a very down-to-earth, accessible, celebrity. ~ Nina Jacobson

I pored over art books and absorbed the placidness of Monet's garden, the sparkling color of the Impressionists, the strength and solidity of Michelangelo's figures showing the titanic power of humans at one with God, Jan Vermeer's serene Dutch women bathed in gorgeous honey-colored light ... My conviction grew that art was stronger than death. ~ Susan Vreeland

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. ~ Voltaire

Literature supplements the lives of people and enables us to feel connected with the world. Shared stories blunt a sense of tragic aloneness, and endow us with the tools to understand our humanness. Reading about the lives of other people acquaints us with the hardships of other people. The authorial voices of narrative prose express our shared feelings of deprivation ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I don't write about myself. I'm never in my books. ~ Susan Straight

They teach us that in school, matters of principle. I swear it's a plot to get us all slaughtered the day they graduate us out the door. It's their revenge, see? Here we are reading books in literature class about some banana who's only got one oar in the water to start with, and then he pops it out worrying about principles. ~ Guy Vanderhaeghe

The elevator doors opened, and I squeezed myself out before pulling out the Wardrober. It was heavy. "What do you have in there?" I said. "Your whole house?"

"Almost," Simone laughed. "My favorite books. ~ Kailin Gow

In fact I don't think of literature, or music, or any art form as having a nationality. Where you're born is simply an accident of fate. I don't see why I shouldn't be more interested in say, Dickens, than in an author from Barcelona simply because I wasn't born in the UK. I do not have an ethno-centric view of things, much less of literature. Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Above The Thunder is passionate, wise, and piercingly beautiful. Readers drawn to books with rich, memorable characters and contemporary stories will find this remarkable debut novel not only irresistible but impossible to put down. ~ Tony Ardizzone

Often the adult book is not for you, not yet, or will only be for you when you're ready. But sometimes you will read it anyway, and you will take from it whatever you can. Then, perhaps, you will come back to it when you're older, and you will find the book has changed because you have changed as well, and the book is wiser, or more foolish, because you are wiser or more foolish than you were as a child. ~ Neil Gaiman

The amount of response I get, in both a negative and a positive context, is completely related to the amount of books I sell, I think. It seems to have nothing to do with what I'm writing, but what degree of success I'm perceived to have. It's really weird, especially since I spent so much of my life covering people who are famous. It's interesting to actually have it happen to me on some level. ~ Chuck Klosterman

At a Boston signing, someone from the audience asked why I was so obsessed with furniture in my books. The question rattled around in my head. I had no idea that I was obsessed with furniture. ~ Jonathan Carroll

Few books are more thrilling than certain confessions, but they must be honest, and the author must have something to confess. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone ~ Horace

Government, religion, property, books, are nothing but the scaffolding to build men. Earth holds up to her master no fruit like the finished man. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Reading helps you understand another person's truth, and gives you the tools to share your own truth with people you may never even meet ~ Celine Kiernan

People who pass their lives in reading and acquire their wisdom from books are like those who learn about a country from travel descriptions: they can impart information about a great number of things, but at bottom they possess no connected, clear, thorough knowledge of what the country is like. On the other hand, people who pass their lives in thinking are like those who have visited the country themselves: they alone are really familiar with it, possess connected knowledge of it and are truly at home in it. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Read books when you are free, read minds when you are'nt ... but do read ... ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Books - all books - are complicated things, muttering at us in different contradictory voices, refusing to stay the same when we go back to them. Tying them down too much robs of them of the magic. ~ Andrew Rilstone

Alfred: Are you alright?
Batman: I'm going to need a better car. Police are here. They'll pick up the others.
Alfred: And they'll probably be back on the streets by sunrise thanks to Harvey Dent. I know you don't want to hear it, but if you want to make Gotham a safer place we need to rethink how we're going to do that. You should come home now. Dinner's gonna get cold.
Batman: Don't tell me it's cottage pie again.
Alfred:...I'll order a pizza. ~ Geoff Johns

Some of our newspapers and magazines are more concerned with the welfare of their advertisers than they are with the dissemination of news and the discussion of matters of lasting importance ... Radio, television, motion pictures, popular books - all contribute ... to ... the stifling of dissent on all but the most banal levels ... a renunciation of the most basic and precious of democratic principles. ~ J. Paul Getty

His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind. ~ Michelle Obama

It looks like fallen petals, and it looks like rain. It looks like the sounds the birds make at dawn. It looks like the aisle of grocery stores when a song I love suddenly begins to play overhead, and I cannot help but dance a little dance. It looks like a sigh, a kiss, an unmade bed. It looks like Cheerios in a white bowl with a bit of silence on the side. It looks like a plain vanilla cupcake in white paper, a dance with the wind, pink toenails, warm socks. It looks like a fire against the cold of winter, and a deep lake cool against a summer sky. It looks like chick flicks, books that make you cry, and all the candles blown out on the first try. ~ D. Smith Kaich Jones