Books 4

Valentin Rekunenko

The books that help you most
are those which make you think that most.
The hardest way of learning is
that of easy reading;
but a great book that comes from a great thinker
is a ship of thought,
deep freighted with truth and beauty.
Pablo Neruda

The best moments in reading are when you come across something -
a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things -
which you had thought special and particular to you.
And now, here it is, set down by someone else,
a person you have never met,
someone even who is long dead.
And it is as if a hand has come out,
and taken yours.
Alan Bennett

A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone,
if it is to keep its edge.
George R.R. Martin

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them.
Ray Bradbury

♥♥♥

Fairy Tales

Aimee Stewart - Treasure Hunt

Child of the pure, unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder!
Though time be fleet and I and thou
Are half a life asunder,
Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love-gift of a fairy tale.
Lewis Carroll

When the first baby laughed for the first time,
its laugh broke into a thousand pieces,
and they all went skipping about,
and that was the beginning of fairies.
And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy.
So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl.
James M. Barrie – Peter Pan.

Fairy Tales are more than true;
not because they tell us that dragons exist,
but because they tell us
that dragons can be beaten.
G. K. Chesterton

If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales.
If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.
Albert Einstein

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
C. S. Lewis

♥♥♥

Bothering

Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?

It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long,
difficult words but rather short, easy words like
“What about lunch?

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last,
“what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”
“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”
“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said.

If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient.
It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and
lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you,
you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.

Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along,
listening to all the things you can’t hear,
and not bothering.

“It’s snowing still,” said Eeyore gloomily.
“So it is.”
“And freezing.”
“Is it?”
“Yes,” said Eeyore. “However,” he said, brightening up a little,
“we haven’t had an earthquake lately.”

A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.

 A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

♥♥♥

Bother

Museum of Childhood
The Christopher Robin Story Book showing the Winnie-the-Pooh characters at the Enchanted Place. Drawn and signed by E. H. Shepard, about 1928

“Bother.”

A quotation is a handy thing to have about,
saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself.

The things that make me different are the things that make me.

If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together…
there is something you must always remember.
You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem,
and smarter than you think.
But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart…
I’ll always be with you.

You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you.
You have to go to them sometimes.

Just because an animal is large, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want kindness;
however big Tigger seems to be, remember that he wants as much kindness as Roo.

“I don’t see much sense in that,” said Rabbit.
“No,” said Pooh humbly, “there isn’t.
But there was going to be when I began it.
It’s just that something happened to it along the way.”

Pay attention to where you are going
because without meaning you might get nowhere.

 A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

♥♥♥

Books 3

The most important thing we’ve learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set –
Or better still, just don’t install
The idiotic thing at all.

Books 2

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it,
or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face.
It is one of the few havens remaining
where a man’s mind can get both provocation and privacy.
Edward P. Morgan

It is what you read when you don’t have to
that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.
Oscar Wilde

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision
and strengthens our most fatal tendency -
the belief that the here and now is all there is.
Allan Bloom

Books are the compasses and telescopes
and sextants and charts
which other men have prepared to help us
navigate the dangerous seas of human life.
Jesse Lee Bennett

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend.
Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
Groucho Marx

Books

You think your pain and your heartbreak
are unprecedented in the history of the world,
but then you read.
It was books that taught me that the things
that tormented me most were the very things
that connected me with all the people who were alive,
or who had ever been alive.
James Baldwin

I have always imagined that Paradise
will be some kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges

When I have a little money, I buy books;
and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.
Erasmus of Rotterdam

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or
a book long enough to suit me.
C.S.Lewis