One of the great defects of English books printed in the last century is the want of an index.
quote by Lafcadio Hearn

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Books Are Burning
Books are burning
In the main square, and I saw there
The first eating the text
Books are burning
In the still air
And you know where they burn books
People are next
I believe the printed word should be forgiven
Doesnt matter what it said
Wisdom hotline from the dead back to the living
Key to the larder for your heart and head
Books are burning
In our own town, watch us turn round
And cast our glances elsewhere
Books are burning
In the playground
Smell of burnt book is not unlike human hair
I believe the printed word is more than sacred
Beyond the gauge of good or bad
The human right to let your soul fly free and naked
Above the violence of the fearful and sad
The church of matches
Anoints in ignorance with gasoline
The church of matches
Grows fat by breathing in the smoke of dreams
Its quite obscene
Books are burning
More each day now, and I pray now
You boys will tire of these games
Books are burning
I hope somehow, this will allow
A phoenix up from the flames
song performed by by Xtc

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Books
The universe (which others call the library). . .
-Jorge Luis Borges
Books which are stitched up the center with coarse white thread
Books on the beach with sunglass-colored pages
Books about food with pictures of weeping grapefruits
Books about baking bread with browned corners
Books about long-haired Frenchmen with uncut pages
Books of erotic engravings with pages that stick
Books about inns whose stars have sputtered out
Books of illuminations surrounded by darkness
Books with blank pages & printed margins
Books with fanatical footnotes in no-point type
Books with book lice
Books with rice-paper pastings
Books with book fungus blooming over their pages
Books with pages of skin with flesh-colored bindings
Books by men in love with the letter O
Books which smell of earth whose pages turn
poem by Erica Jong

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I've always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden's animations.
quote by Stephen Fry

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The 20th Century was the century of Aviation and the century of Globalization. The next century will be the century of Space.
quote by Wilson Greatbatch

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The Bible is worth all the other books which have ever been printed.
quote by Patrick Henry

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They know not their own defects who search for the defects of others.

More recently, books, especially paperbacks, have been printed in massive and inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the origin of species, the interpretation of dreams, the nature of things. Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.
Carl Sagan in Cosmos

Submitted by Catalin Popescu
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Books up on books
Color in Black, color in white
And also in different colors
Colors were brushed in minds
Respectively be hard
Printed embossed letters
In books of epigraphy
Color in black
On Space of white
Told that is black
Black white and colors
Books up on books
Being closed near by
Dialogues having intercourse
Get soaked colors of minds
Smudged
Scabrous words
Boorish colors
In a content of
In a book
Wearing a strange cover
Not get closed
And be separated
Having filed up afar
At the library of old
On a table
Books up on books
Turn pages
Marking and conflicting
And also comparing
An empty paper
A pen
A hand with five fingers
An artist
poem by Udaya R. Tennakoon

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Love drops defects
Near-look finds out defects;
Dear-look shuts out defects.
Instant look notices potholes;
Fervent look ignores them.
No beloved is ugly
To her lover
12.08.99
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

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The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.
quote by Jonathan Coe

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Twentieth Century
Oh, the Twentieth Century wasn't all that bad
It was a time like no one else has ever had
We learned to drive, we learned to fly
We sent a man into the sky
When he walked on the moon, we were so glad
Yeah, the Twentieth Century wasn't all that bad
Yeah, the Twentieth Century was quite a ride
We had to learn to see the other side
We had demonstrations and liberations
Great depressions and good vibrations
And doors that once were closed were opened wide
Oh, the Twentieth Century was quite a ride
We had movin' pictures and radio
And Broadway, country, rock and roll
In 1900, who'd a bet we'd all be surfing on the internet
Yeah, the Twentieth Century was a heck of a show
We all had our fifteen minutes, don't you know
Assembly lines, celebrities,
the spotlight shined on you and me
And everybody got a standin' O
Yeah, the Twentieth Century was a heck of a show
From blocks of ice to air condition
Telegraph to television
In 1900, who'd a known we all wind up
with pocket phones
The Twentieth Century wasn't all that long
Just a hundred years has come and gone
We can't go back even if we try
So I'll just smile and wave goodbye
To see it leavin' makes me kinda sad
It was a time like no one else has ever had
Oh, the Twentieth Century wasn't all that bad
The Twentieth Century
Bye-bye
The Twentieth Century
Goodbye
song performed by by Alabama

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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This Crazy English Language
English is crazy, we do explore
Singular and plural, probe for more
If goose for geese and tooth for teeth
Why isn't the plural of booth, beeth?
English speakers, verbally insane
Learning this language is really a pain
Index to indices, teachers taught
Why didn't those preachers praught?
Feet that smell, noses that run
Away with murder, such a pun
Play at recital, recite at play
Oral asylum, what else could it be?
poem by Noel A Medina

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The great wars of the 20th Century made it into the worst Century ever.
quote by Stephen Ambrose

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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However, I survived and started to read all chemistry books that I could get a hand on, first some 19th century books from our home library that did not provide much reliable information, and then I emptied the rather extensive city library.
quote by Richard Ernst

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One of the things that I've always thought I would like to do is to develop an environmental index. Then people can measure their own environmental performance on an index as they do in other ways.
quote by Maurice Strong

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Test Week
Here comes test week one
There is less time for fun.
Boys are studying hard all day
For them to top in some way.
Some have english first than chemistry
Then physics, maths and history.
They stay up late till twelve 'o' clock
The studying never seems to stop.
For maths, boys practice many sums
And do so well that 'hundred' comes.
Books in the morning, books at night
Books, books, books all the time.
Then comes the end of 'test week one'
Now its time for all the fun.
Nest week inter-house soccer begins
The competitions tough....
....Never know who's going to win!
poem by Varun Pais

Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Twentieth Century Fox
Well, shes fashionably lean, and shes fashionably late
Shell never wreck a scene, shell never break a date
But shes no drag, just watch the way she walks
Shes a twentieth century fox, shes a twentieth century fox
No tears, no fears, no ruined years, no clocks
Shes a twentieth century fox, oh yeah
Shes the queen of cool, and shes the lady who waits
Sent to manless school, it never hesitates
She wont waste time, on elementary talk
cause shes a twentieth century fox, shes a twentieth century fox
Got the world locked up, inside a plastic box
Shes a twentieth century fox, oh yeah
Twentieth century fox, oh yeah
Twentieth century fox
Shes a twentieth century fox
song performed by by Doors

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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One layer was certainly 17th century. The 18th century in him is obvious. There was the 19th century, and a large slice, of course, of the 20th century; and another, curious layer which may possibly have been the 21st.
quote by Clement Attlee

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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To My Name-Child
1
Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed,
Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read.
Then you shall discover, that your name was printed down
By the English printers, long before, in London town.
In the great and busy city where the East and West are met,
All the little letters did the English printer set;
While you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play,
Foreign people thought of you in places far away.
Ay, and when you slept, a baby, over all the English lands
Other little children took the volume in their hands;
Other children questioned, in their homes across the seas:
Who was little Louis, won't you tell us, mother, please?
2
Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play,
Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey,
Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze,
Tiny sandpipers, and the huge Pacific seas.
And remember in your playing, as the sea-fog rolls to you,
Long ere you could read it, how I told you what to do;
And that while you thought of no one, nearly half the world away
Some one thought of Louis on the beach of Monterey!
poem by Robert Louis Stevenson

Submitted by Poetry Lover
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No one bothered reading the books and understanding - and again, I'm not being high-falutin' about it - but I think our books are great literature with great metaphors of real life dealing with fears and hopes.