A Quote by Benjamin Disraeli

Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

Benjamin Disraeli

Quote Topics

Books Clever Existing Nine Nonsense Refutation

Quote Author

Benjamin Disraeli
British - Celebrity
December 21, 1804 - April 19, 1881

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

Benjamin Disraeli

Nine-tenths of all existing books are nonsense.

Benjamin Disraeli

For as to the dispersing of Books, that Circumstance does perhaps as much harm as good: Since Nonsense flies with greater Celerity, and makes greater Impression than Reason; though indeed no particular species of Nonsense is so durable. But the several Forms of Nonsense never cease succeeding one another; and Men are always under the Dominion of some one or other, though nothing was ever equal in Absurdity and Wickedness to our present Patriotism.

David Hume

The notion that artists flourish upon adversity and misunderstanding, that they are able to function to the utmost in an atmosphere of indifference or hostility - this notion is nine-tenths nonsense.

H. L. Mencken

If you're doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there'd be no point. I'm trying to think if there's sunny nonsense. Sunny, funny nonsense for children — oh, how boring, boring, boring. As Schubert said, there is no happy music. And that's true, there really isn't. And there's probably no happy nonsense, either.

Edward Gorey

Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The most serious parody I have ever heard was this: In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nonsense is that which does not fit into the prearranged patterns which we have superimposed on reality...Nonsense is nonsense only when we have not yet found that point of view from which it makes sense.

Gary Zukav

No one knows as well as I how much nonsense is printed in books.

Julia Quinn

There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals.

T. E. Lawrence

I always say perseverance is nine-tenths of any art — not that it's much help to be nine-tenths an artist, of course.

Peter S. Beagle

Hudibras has defined nonsense, as Cowley does wit, by negatives. Nonsense, he says, is that which is neither true nor false. These two great properties of nonsense, which are always essential to it, give it such a peculiar advantage over all other writings, that it is incapable of being either answered or contradicted.