Top Ten Quotes from Books

Top 10 Tuesday is a weekly event hosted at The Broke and Bookish.
This week’s topic: Top Ten Quotes From Books

I hadn't intended on doing this, but seeing the posts come up, I just had to. Many moons ago, my dad gave me a journal. I don't know why, because I'd never kept a journal or diary, and I wasn't a writer. So I started collecting quotes and lyrics that I liked in it. So here is a selection.


1. "...and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge." Tyrion tapped the leather cover of the book. "That's why I read so much, Jon Snow." ~A Game of Thrones George R.R. Martin

2. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strenghtens. ~The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon

3. To love oneself is the beginning of a life long romance. ~An Ideal Husband Oscar Wilde

4. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever. ~Resistance to Civil Government Henry David Thoreau

5. They afterwards took me to a dancing saloon where I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice: 'Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.' ~Impressions of America Oscar Wilde

6. My idea is that if we girls have any influence we should use it for the good of these boys, and not pamper them up, making slaves of ourselves and tyrants of them. Let them prove what they can do and be before they ask anything of us, and give us a chance to do the same. Then we know where we are, and shall not make mistakes to mourn over all our lives. ~Jo's Boys Louisa May Alcott

7. Before the gates of excellence the high gods have placed sweat; long is the road there to and rough and steep at first; but when the heights are reached, then there is ease, then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning. ~Works and Days Hesiod

8. Oh well... I'd just been thinking, if you had died, you'd have been welcome to share my toilet. ~Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets J. K. Rowling

9. Courage is found in unlikely places. ~Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien

10. Ideas are not mirrors, they are weapons; their function is to prepare us to meet events, as future experience may unroll them. ~The Genteel Tradtion in American Philosophy George Santayana