Get The BookBrowse Anthology, our 880 page collection of our past decade of Best of Year reviews, now available in hardcover!

Famous literary quotes with a biography of each quoted person.

BookBrowse's Favorite Literary Quotes

Page 1 of 6

A book is one of the most patient of all man's inventions.

A book may be compared to your neighbor...

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say

A few books well chosen, and well made use of, will be more profitable than a great confused Alexandrian library.

A library is a temple unabridged with priceless treasure...

A library is thought in cold storage

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas--a place where history comes to life.

A million monkeys...

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it...

All my major works have been written in prison...

Anagrams

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics...

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.

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The River Knows Your Name
    by Kelly Mustian
    A haunting Southern novel about memory and love, from the author of The Girls in the Stilt House.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    One Death at a Time
    by Abbi Waxman

    A cranky ex-actress and her Gen Z sobriety sponsor team up to solve a murder that could send her back to prison in this dazzling mystery.

  • Book Jacket

    The Seven O'Clock Club
    by Amelia Ireland

    Four strangers join an experimental treatment to heal broken hearts in Amelia Ireland's heartfelt debut novel.

  • Book Jacket

    Happy Land
    by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

    From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.

  • Book Jacket

    The Fairbanks Four
    by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue

    One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

Who Said...

Anagrams

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

J of A T, M of N

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.