Rufus Choate Quotes

Laws die, books never.

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a metaphor, not just for books but for ideas, for language, for knowledge, for beauty, for all the things that make us human, for collecting memory.

What’s written remains, though a writer is buried beneath the ground.

Do I think there's life after death? No, I think my books are my life after death.

Books, the children of the brain.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.

Always I'm working on some of book. That's the way I make a living.

People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory.

Books cannot be killed by fire.

There is no past, as long as books shall live. Books make the past our heritage and our home.

Books light the fire-whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.

A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.

Books are sepulchres of thought.

Manuscripts do not burn.

The only reason I became a writer was so I could exist on a piece of paper.

I've never actually even contemplated writing a book or having a book.

All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me; if I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself.

Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.

A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.

I love my books.

The most inspiring objects are books. I have about 5,000 volumes in my home library. It's an unending source of visuals and ideas.

But everything of value about me is in my books.

A recluse without books and ink is already in life a dead man.

The cool thing about writing music, writing anything, is that once you publish it, it's there forever.