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Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us... While what we call 'our own life' remains agr...more

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Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us.

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When the voice of your friend or the page of your book sinks into democratic equality with the pattern of the wallpaper, the feel of your clothes, you...more

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Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this ...more

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You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes yo...more

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Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and sponta...more

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It must be a really great book because one can read it as a boy in one way, and then re-read it in middle life and get something very different out of...more

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But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the s...more

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The human heart is not unchanging (nay, changes almost out of recognition in the twinkling of an eye)...

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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.

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Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I ...more

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One never meets just Cancer, or War, or Unhappiness (or Happiness). One only meets each hour or moment that comes. All manner of ups and downs. Many b...more

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

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The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

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A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.