Top 40 Holbrook Jackson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Happiness is a form of courage.”

— Holbrook Jackson

2. “Books worth reading are worth re-reading.”

— Holbrook Jackson

3. “When in doubt, risk it.”

— Holbrook Jackson

4. “Love is the most subtle form of self-interest.”

— Holbrook Jackson

5. “Your library is your portrait.”

— Holbrook Jackson

6. “Great books conserve time.”

— Holbrook Jackson

7. “Only one-fourth of the sorrow in each man’s life is caused by outside uncontrollable elements, the rest is self-imposed by failing to analyze and act with calmness.”

— Holbrook Jackson

8. “Pedantry is the dotage of knowledge.”

— Holbrook Jackson

9. “Education begins by teaching children to read and ends by making most of them hate reading.”

— Holbrook Jackson

10. “A large, still book is a piece of quietness, succulent and nourishing in a noisy world, which I approach and imbibe with “a sort of greedy enjoyment,” as Marcel Proust said of those rooms of his old home whose air was “saturated with the bouquet of silence.””

— Holbrook Jackson

11. “Suffer fools gladly; they may be right.”

— Holbrook Jackson

12. “The great revolution of the future will be Nature’s revolt against man.”

— Holbrook Jackson

13. “Fear of corrupting the mind of the younger generation is the loftiest form of cowardice.”

— Holbrook Jackson

14. “Be contented, when you have got all you want.”

— Holbrook Jackson

15. “Genius is initiative on fire.”

— Holbrook Jackson

16. “Why did Nature create man? Was it to show that she is big enough to make mistakes, or was it pure ignorance?”

— Holbrook Jackson

17. “No man is ever old enough to know better.”

— Holbrook Jackson

18. “Man is a dog’s idea of what God should be.”

— Holbrook Jackson

19. “Intuition is reason in a hurry.”

— Holbrook Jackson

20. “The newest books are those that never grow old.”

— Holbrook Jackson

21. “Originality is only variation.”

— Holbrook Jackson

22. “The possession of a great many things, even the best of things, tends to blind one to the real value of anything.”

— Holbrook Jackson

23. “Beware of your habits. The better they are the more surely they will be your undoing.”

— Holbrook Jackson

24. “There are only two classes in society: those who get more than they earn, and those who earn more than they get.”

— Holbrook Jackson

25. “We are more inclined to regret our virtues than our vices; but only the very honest will admit this.”

— Holbrook Jackson

26. “History proves there is no better advertisement for a book than to condemn it for obscenity.”

— Holbrook Jackson

27. “Past and present, it is all the same, books are necromancers, they exercise an influence more varied, more lasting, than any magic known to man.”

— Holbrook Jackson

28. “A good book is always on tap; it may be decanted and drunk a hundred times, and it is still there for further imbibement.”

— Holbrook Jackson

29. “As soon as an idea is accepted it is time to reject it.”

— Holbrook Jackson

30. “The time to read is any time: no apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary.”

— Holbrook Jackson

31. “People who want to be amused have lost the art of living.”

— Holbrook Jackson

32. “The end of reading is not more books but more life.”

— Holbrook Jackson

33. “Book-love, I say again, lasts throughout life, it never flags or fails, but, like Beauty itself, is a joy forever.”

— Holbrook Jackson

34. “The better the book the more room for the reader.”

— Holbrook Jackson

35. “The poor are the only consistent altruists; they sell all they have and give it to the rich.”

— Holbrook Jackson

36. “The time to read is any time: no apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary. It is the only art which can be practiced at any hour of the day or night, whenever the time and inclination comes, that is your time for reading; in joy or sorrow, health or illness.”

— Holbrook Jackson

37. “Those who seek happiness miss it, and those who discuss it, lack it.”

— Holbrook Jackson

38. “Don’t try to convert the elderly person; circumvent him.”

— Holbrook Jackson

39. “If we are imprisoned in ourselves, books provide us with the means of escape. If we have run too far away from ourselves, books show us the way back.”

— Holbrook Jackson

40. “Forgive everybody but yourself.”

— Holbrook Jackson