Standards are always out of date. That's what makes them standards.
Alan BennettRead
A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Books stimulate creativity and imagination.
This quote emphasizes the transformative power of books in sparking imagination and creativity in readers. Alan Bennett suggests that books serve as catalysts for innovative thinking and personal exploration, encouraging individuals to dream and envision possibilities beyond their immediate reality.
Themes
BooksImaginationCreativityReadingEducation
In practice
Example use cases
During a book club meeting to highlight the importance of reading.
More from Alan Bennett
All quotes βTo begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
Alan BennettRead
Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
Alan BennettRead
To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.
Alan BennettRead
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 BennettRead
...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
Alan BennettRead
Similar quotes
I do not write for this generation. I am writing for other ages. If this could read me, they would burn my books, the work of my whole life. On the other hand, the generation which interprets these writings will be an educated generation; they will understand me and say: 'Not all were asleep in the nighttime of our grandparents.'
Jose RizalRead
There are two extremes to be avoided: one is the attitude of contempt toward education, the other is the tragic snobbery of assuming that marching through an educational system is a sure cure for ignorance and mediocrity.
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But I marvel when I observe these men setting themselves up as instructors of youth who cannot see that they are applying the analogy of an art with hard and fast rules to a creative process
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I like to build places online where readers can have productive conversations about books.
John GreenRead
A fondness for reading, which, properly directed, must be an education in itself.
Jane AustenRead
Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution - such call I good books.
Henry David ThoreauRead