A Quote by Thomas Jefferson

From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.

Thomas Jefferson

Quote Topics

Almost Daylight Done Even Experience Falsehood Forty Forty Years Guess Never Newspapers Notice Open Rarely Reading Them Think Work Worth Worth Reading Wretched Years

Quote Author

Thomas Jefferson
American - President
April 13, 1743 - July 4, 1826

It certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.

C. S. Lewis

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well. If it is worth having, it is worth waiting for. If it is worth attaining, it is worth fighting for. If it is worth experiencing, it is worth putting aside time for.

Oscar Wilde

The truth is . . . that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.

H. L. Mencken

The very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it.

John Ruskin

Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in Government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.

Thomas Jefferson

What is the worth of anything we do? The worth is in the act. Your worth halts when you surrender the will to change and experience life

Christopher Paolini

I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world. These times have to be lived through: there is nothing to be done with them.

Bertrand Russell

You will find most books worth reading are worth reading twice.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

I think people do look to writers to tell the truth in a way that nobody else quite will, not politicians or ministers or sociologists. A writer's job, is to, by way of fiction, somehow describe the way we live. And to me, this seems an important task, very worth doing, and I think also, to the reading public, it seems, even though they might not articulate it, it seems to them something worth doing also.

John Updike

Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.

Moliere

The things worth writing about, and the things worth reading about, are the things that feel almost beyond description at the start and are, because of that, frightening.

Douglas Coupland

But you're the hardest thing I've ever done, and you're also the best. So... I think that's the moral of the story here. Anything worth having is worth fighting for.

Amanda Hocking

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

C. S. Lewis

I think of her every time I judge myself or someone else too harshly. How do we really know the worth of our work? It's not our job to judge the worth of what we offer the world, but to keep offering it regardless. You might never know the true worth of your efforts. Or it could simply be too soon to tell.