A Quote by Henry Ward Beecher

Books are the true metempsychosis,--they are the symbol and presage of immortality. The dead men are scattered, and none shall find them. Behold they are here! they do but sleep.

Henry Ward Beecher

Quote Topics

Behold Books Dead Find Immortality Men None Scattered Shall Sleep Symbol Them True

Quote Author

Henry Ward Beecher
American - Priest
June 24, 1813 - March 8, 1887

Books have always been to me like a kind of embalmed mind. The dead may be scattered, and who can find them, but their voices live in the library.

Laurel Lea

What is a great love of books? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times. Books, it is true, are silent as you see them on their shelves; but, silent as they are, when I enter a library I feel as if almost the dead were present, and I know if I put questions to these books they will answer me with all the faithfulness and fulness which has been left in them by the great men who have left the books with us.

John Bright

If I can find out God, then I shall find Him,If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly,Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me, A lamp in darkness.

Sara Teasdale

Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning.

Virginia Woolf

None of my books are best-sellers. In fact, the only thing that's kept me alive is the books that are in paperback. People find them, they like them, and they pass them on.

James Purdy

It will startle you to see what slaves we are to by-gone times-to Death, if we give the matter the right word! ... We read in Dead Men's books! We laugh at Dead Men's jokes, and cry at Dead Men's pathos! . . . Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a Dead Man's icy hand obstructs us!

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Let books be your dining table, / And you shall be full of delights. / Let them be your mattress,/And you shall sleep restful nights

Ephrem the Syrian

So long as men shall be on earth, there will be tasks for them to do. Some way for them to show their worth. Each day shall bring its problems new. And men shall dream of mightier deeds than ever have been done before. There always shall be human needs for men to work and struggle for.

Edgar Guest

God is not dead; nor doth He sleep; ... The wrong shall fail, The right prevail, With peace on earth, good will to men.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is not a terrible thing to a wretched soul, when it shall lie roaring perpetually in the flames of hell, and the God of mercy himself shall laugh at them; when...God shall mock them instead of relieving them; when none in heaven or earth can help them but God, and he shall rejoice over them in their calamity

Richard Baxter

I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism—religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality.

H. P. Lovecraft

I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded.

Gottfried Leibniz

I shall gather myself into my self again, I shall take my scattered selves and make them one.

Sara Teasdale

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with the superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are true levellers. They give to all, who faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race.