All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim.
Christopher MorleyRead
There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.
Interpretation
A true book has a unique essence, much like the feeling of falling in love.
This quote emphasizes the profound and unmistakable connection one feels when encountering a genuine book, similar to the intense emotions of falling in love. It suggests that both experiences evoke strong feelings that are instantly recognized, highlighting the deep emotional impact of literature on our lives.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a book club meeting to spark a discussion about the emotional connections we have with stories.
All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim.
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
When you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.
When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.
Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse of explosives. Those shelves are ranked with the most furious combustibles in the world--the brains of men.
Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a 'good' book. A book is 'good' only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error.
Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That's what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.
When the bride is one with her lover, who cares about the wedding party?
Never in the world does hatred cease by hatred; hatred ceases by love.
Indeed, among the lesser auxiliaries to success in love, an absence, the declining of an invitation to dinner, an unintentional, unconscious harshness are of more service than all the cosmetics and fine clothes in the world.
You are terrifying, and strange, and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love.
And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an american businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead.
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