"Bookshelf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if you would care for one of my earlier books, The Reluctance of Lady Cullumpton," said Mellowkent, hunting again through the bookshelf; "some people consider it my best novel. Ah, here it is. I see there are one or two spots on the cover, so I won't ask more than three-and-ninepence for it. Do let me read ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... stoppers and frosted labels, bottles with fine corks, bottles with bungs, bottles with wooden caps, wine bottles, salad-oil bottles—putting them in rows on the chiffonnier, on the mantel, on the table under the window, round the floor, on the bookshelf—everywhere. The chemist's shop in Bramblehurst could not boast half so many. Quite a sight it was. Crate after crate yielded bottles, until all six were empty and the table high with straw; the only things that came out of these crates ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... invest in many ornaments. A few bits of colored pottery, or some brass ware, is all that is required to strike a lively note. Place these so that they will balance other objects arranged on the same mantel or bookshelf. For example, a pair of brass candlesticks placed at either end of a mantel, with a pottery bowl, clock, or ornament in the center, strikes a balance. Never have a large jar on a small table or stand, or small ornaments on a large table. A good thing to ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... himself arranging his books and newspapers on a shelf in the wardrobe. He seemed upset not to have a small bookshelf over his table, so Gervaise promised to get him one. He had "The History of Ten Years" by Louis Blanc (except for the first volume), Lamartine's "The Girondins" in installments, "The Mysteries of Paris" and "The Wandering ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... up to bed, I stopped in the library, and found the lamp still burning, the pens unused, a cigar, which had been lighted, but unsmoked, lying on the table. A book was lying on the floor at the foot of the bookshelf, where I had left Richard standing. I picked it up. "This was the last book that Uncle Leonard ever read," I said to myself, turning its pages over. I remembered that he had it in his hand the last night of his life, when I bade him goodnight. I was not in ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... is not irreparable. Lord Marshmoreton himself is engaged upon a history of the family, which will doubtless be on every bookshelf as soon as his lordship gets it finished. And, as for the castle and its surroundings, including the model dairy and the amber drawing-room, you may see them for yourself any Thursday, when Belpher is thrown open to the public on payment of a ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... my Shrubs only just be-greening, and I am a Butterfly again. I have heard nothing of Carlyles, Tennysons, etc., save that the latter had written some Ballad about Lucknow. I shall be glad to hear a word of yourself, Calderon, and Don Quixote, the latter of whom [Greek text] from my Bookshelf. Yes, yes, I am ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... flowers. I took down one or two of those books once when I was left alone in the house-place on the first evening—Virgil, Caesar, a Greek grammar—oh, dear! ah, me! and Phillis Holman's name in each of them! I shut them up, and put them back in their places, and walked as far away from the bookshelf as I could. Yes, and I gave my cousin Phillis a wide berth, as though she was sitting at her work quietly enough, and her hair was looking more golden, her dark eyelashes longer, her round pillar of a throat whiter than ever. We had done tea, and we had returned into ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... effectual language because the sensible material symbol never reached those sentient organs which it was intended to affect. A book, again, however full of excellent words it may be, is not language when it is merely standing on a bookshelf. It speaks to no one, unless when being actually read, or quoted from by an act of memory. It is potential language as a lucifer-match is potential fire, but it is no more language till it is in contact with a recipient mind, than a match is fire till it is struck, ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... first eleven. Smashed glass again. Faces cut about with knife as before. His collection of snapshots was torn into a thousand fragments, though, as Mr Jerome said of the papier-mache trout, there may only have been nine hundred. He did not count them. His bookshelf was empty. The books had gone to swell the contents of the floor. There was a Shakespeare with its cover off. Pages twenty-two to thirty-one of Vice Versa had parted from the parent establishment, and were lying by themselves near the door. The Rogues' March lay just beyond them, and ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... went to the bookshelf and took down a folded sheet of paper. "Here is a letter I got yesterday," she explained, as she handed ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... laugh, and was immediately grave again. "It isn't," he went on, "it isn't as I mind the inconvenience of moving, sir—though I shall be mighty sorry to leave the old place, still, it isn't that so much as the small corner cup-board, and my bookshelf by the chimley. There never was such a cup-board,—no sir,—there never was a cup-board so well calculated to hold a pair o' jack boots, not to mention spurs, highlows, burnishers, shoulder-chains, polishing brushes, and—a boot-jack, as that same small corner cup-board. As for the book-shelf ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... the study, his first act was to remove a boot from the top of the pile in the basket, place it in the small cupboard under the bookshelf, and lock the cupboard. Then he flung himself into a chair ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... all his faculties," said the cure to himself. Zosephine had hardly yet learned to read without stammering, when Bonaventure was already devouring the few French works of the cure's small bookshelf. Silent on other subjects, on one he would talk till a pink spot glowed on either cheek-bone and his blue eyes shone like a hot noon sky;—casuistry. He would debate the right and wrong of any thing, every thing, and the rights and wrongs of men in ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... met his eyes when he opened the door did nothing to soothe him. The floor was a sea of clothes. There were coats on the chairs, trousers on the bed, shirts on the bookshelf. And in the middle of his welter stood Archie, with a man who, to Mr. Brewster's heated eye, looked like a tramp comedian out of a ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... me play the flute! No more you have. Dash it, how remiss!' continued he, making for the little bookshelf on which it lay; adding, as he blew into it and sucked the joints, 'you're ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... of impatience Phyllis sprang to her feet. After a pause she went to a little satin-wood cabinet which she had turned into a bookshelf, and took out her Bible. She had never slept a night for years without reading a chapter; and in order to avert the possibility of her own feelings or fancies of the moment making any invidious distinction between the various component parts of a book which is profitable in every line, ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... utilitarian, clambered up to the door-lintel, invading the very roof. He pictured to himself the interior. Bare walls and floorings, a print or two, a few trunks and packing cases utilized as seats, a bookshelf, a plain table littered with manuscripts; somewhere, in that further room, a camp bedstead whereon this man of single aim and purpose, this monk of literature, was even then at rest like all sensible ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... pleasures and amusements that don't help you to be better boys? Are you getting chummy with other boys whose companionship is not good and whose words and deeds you would not dare to talk about at home? Are you reading useless books and letting the treasures of literature on mother's bookshelf at home go untouched? Are you trying to find short-cuts to success, when there isn't any such thing, and neglecting the hard work which has brought honor and success to all who have reached a high place? If you are doing any of these things, get out the pruning hook of good resolution ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... Lord-Lieutenant for Diddlesex; an engraving, from an almanac, of Saint Boniface College, Oxon; and a sticking-plaster portrait of Hugby when young, in a cap and gown. A copy of his 'Sermons to a Nobleman's Family' is on the bookshelf, by the 'Whole Duty of Man,' the Reports of the Missionary Societies, and the 'Oxford University Calendar.' Old Hugby knows part of this by heart; every living belonging to Saint Boniface, and the name of every tutor, fellow, nobleman, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Ned gave her! Fearful lest Father should overhear (for Blindness quickens the other Senses), he runs up to the Bookshelf, and cries, "Why, Uncle, you have brought down Plenty of Entertainment with you! Here are Plato, Xenophon, and Sallust, Homer and Euripides, Dante and Petrarch, Chaucer and Spenser, . . . and . . . oh, oh! you read Plays sometimes, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... upon Dickens. If Smollett had served the cause in no other way than in his strong effect upon the author of "The Pickwick Papers," he would deserve well of all critics: how the little Copperfield delighted in that scant collection of books on his father's bookshelf, where were "Roderick Random," "Peregrine Pickle" and "Humphrey Clinker," along with "Tom Jones," "The Vicar of Wakefield," "Gil Blas" and "Robinson Crusoe"—"a glorious host," says he, "to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy and ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... the only head that adorns Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL'S room. On a bookshelf opposite is a model of his own head, such as one may sometimes see in the shop windows of hatters, and close beside is a small private hat-making plant, together with an adequate supply of the hair of the rabbit, the beaver, the vicuna and similar rodents, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... be uncut, so that their readers, should they wish to peep at the author's physiognomy for curiosity's sake, may—if that curiosity prove its own punishment—leave those first pages uncut until the book falls to pieces on the bookshelf. For myself, I hate to read some beautifully written thought, only to have the author's distinctly unbeautiful face always protruding between me and my delight—like some utterance of the commonplace in the middle of ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... these moods was his manner in playing on the violin I had now found with broken strings, at the back of his bookshelf. As it lay there, it recalled the incidents of ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... sleep nearly all day on a bookshelf in my study, and would, if called, lazily look up, yawn, and then come down to be petted, after which it would spring up again into its retreat. At night it was very active, especially in bounding from branch to branch of a tree which I had cut ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Paul. He laid his hand upon a bookshelf, and stood swaying there as if he were about to fall. 'What brought her ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... to more adventures; but they seldom appreciate the excellent mature reasons which banish the dime novel to a secret place in the haymow, while Crusoe hangs proudly on the Christmas tree or holds an honored place on the family bookshelf. Defoe's Apparition of Mrs. Veal, Memoirs of a Cavalier, and Journal of the Plague Year are such mixtures of fact, fiction, and credulity that they defy classification; while other so-called "novels," like Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders, and Roxana, are but, little better than picaresque ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... fire-screen before the cast-iron grate; the mahogany cupboard with glass windows, full of little knickknacks; the beaded footstools; Keats, Shelley, Southey, Cowper, Coleridge, Byron's Corsair (but nothing else), and the Victorian poets in a bookshelf row; the marqueterie cabinet lined with dim red plush, full of family relics: Hester's first fan; the buckles of their mother's father's shoes; three bottled scorpions; and one very yellow elephant's tusk, sent home from India by Great-uncle Edgar Forsyte, who had been in jute; a yellow bit of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cannot you, out of the vast storehouse of really necessary knowledge, select apparatus better fitted to strengthen and not overstrain the mental muscles of ten-to-fourteen? You, gentle reader, with brain fully grown, trained by years of practice to its subtlest uses, take me from your bookshelf, say, your Browning or even your Shakespeare. Come, you know this language well. You have not merely learned: it is your mother tongue. Construe for me this short passage, these few verses: parse, analyse, resolve into component ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome |
