“Nowadays people rush into print before they’ve even finished the proof.”
― Denis Guedj, quote from The Parrot's Theorem
“Thales did something different. He asked questions to which he didn’t know the answers.”
― Denis Guedj, quote from The Parrot's Theorem
“I forzati del portatile lo guardarono con indulgenza, mentre cercava con ansia febbrile. Il portapenne non c'era più. Si era certamente spezzato! Chinandosi per guardare sotto il tavolo, notò il rigonfiamento in una delle opere che trattavano di matematica e, aprendola, trovò il portapenne di Murano, infilato tra due pagine.”
― Denis Guedj, quote from The Parrot's Theorem
“[...] Quella perdita della libertà nello spazio fisico, aveva trovato il modo di compensarla, sostituendovi spazi di pensiero nuovi. Ciascuno se la cava come può, ammesso che ci riesca.”
― Denis Guedj, quote from The Parrot's Theorem
“I libri non resuscitano i morti, e non fanno di un idiota un uomo capace di ragionare, né di uno stupido un individuo intelligente: aguzzano lo spirito, lo destano, lo affinano e appagano la sua sete di conoscenza. Quanto a chi vuol sapere tutto, è meglio che la famiglia lo faccia curare, perché un simile desiderio non può che nascere da un turbamento dello spirito. Muto quando gli imponi il silenzio, eloquente quando lo fai parlare. Grazie al libro, puoi apprendere nello spazio di un mese quello che un'eternità non ti consentirebbe di apprendere dalle labbra di un sapiente, e questo senza farti contrarre debiti di sapere. Ti libera dall'imbarazzo, ti solleva dalle necessità di frequentare persone odiose e di avere rapporti con individui stupidi e incapaci di comprendere. Ti obbedisce di giorno come di notte, tanto in viaggio quanto nei periodi in cui sei sedentario. Se cadi in disgrazia, non per questo il libro rinuncia a servirti; se venti contrari soffiano contro di te, non ti si rivolta contro. Accade talvolta che il libro sia superiore al suo autore.”
― Denis Guedj, quote from The Parrot's Theorem
Denis Guedj
Born place: in Setif, Algeria
Born date November 22, 1940
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“Holmes was charming and gracious, but something about him made Belknap uneasy. He could not have defined it. Indeed, for the next several decades alienists and their successors would find themselves hard-pressed to describe with any precision what it was about men like Holmes that could cause them to seem warm and ingratiating but also telegraph the vague sense that some important element of humanness was missing. At first alienists described this condition as “moral insanity” and those who exhibited the disorder as “moral imbeciles.” They later adopted the term “psychopath,” used in the lay press as early as 1885 in William Stead’s Pall Mall Gazette, which described it as a “new malady” and stated, “Beside his own person and his own interests, nothing is sacred to the psychopath.” Half a century later, in his path-breaking book The Mask of Sanity, Dr. Hervey Cleckley described the prototypical psychopath as “a subtly constructed reflex machine which can mimic the human personality perfectly. … So perfect is his reproduction of a whole and normal man that no one who examines him in a clinical setting can point out in scientific or objective terms why, or how, he is not real.”
― Erik Larson, quote from The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
“Some day, his mind said, that boy would know what things were in the books and what things were not.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Pearl
“You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you've got enough nerve.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from Harry Potter Boxset
“Because I miss them. Because I need them. Because I love them.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
“You must suffer me to go my own dark way.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
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Hold My HandBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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