Quotes about Books

I have walked by stalls in the market-place where books, dog-eared and faded from their purple, have burst with a white hosanna. I have seen people crowned with a double crown, holding in either hand the crook and flail, the power and the glory. I have understood how the scar be

Can you imagine doing ministry the last five hundred years and getting away with 'Sorry, I don't do books'? Can you imagine doing ministry in the next five years and getting away with 'Sorry, I don't do Facebook'?

'What is the use of a book', thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?'

Many ministers are more the church's institutional managers than its theological guides; correspondingly, many read more management ("leadership") books than they do works of academic theology.

Finally, do not try to understand every word or page of a difficult book the first time through. This is the most important rule of all; it is the essence of inspectional reading. Do not be afraid to be, or to seem to be, superficial. Race through even the hardest book. You will then be prepared to read it well the second time.

4. If the book is a new one with a dust jacket, READ THE PUBLISHER'S BLURB.

The questions answered by inspectional reading are: first, what kind of book is it? second, what is it about as a whole? and third, what is the structural order of the work whereby the author develops his conception or understanding of that general subject matter?

Francis Bacon once remarked that "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." Reading a book analytically is chewing and digesting it.

My main goal is still for the books to minister in some way, to teach a spiritual truth, to enlighten people.

How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books. They make us think that we really understand things of which we have no practical knowledge at all.

Books that speak like God speak with too much authority to entertain us. Those that speak like good men hold us by their human charm; we grow by finding ourselves in them.

but the one counsel he did give me is something that I will not easily forget: "There are many beautiful mystical books written by the Christians. You should read St. Augustine's Confessions, and The Imitation of Christ