Quote

The way a book is read, which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it.

Norman Cousins

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Norman Cousins
Age: 75 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 24
Died: 1990
Died: November 30
Journalist
Literary Critic
Peace Activist
Professor
Writer
Union City
New Jersey
Much
Brings
Way
Reader
Worth
Quality
Reading
Literacy
Read
Author
Anything
Puts
Book
Qualities

More quotes by Norman Cousins

Image
The marvelous pharmacy that was designed by nature and placed into our being by the universal architect produces most of the medicines we need.
Norman Cousins
Image
For every low there is an equal but opposite high.
Norman Cousins
Image
Reverence for life is more than solicitude or sensitivity for life. It is a sense of the whole, a capacity for inspired response, a respect for the intricate universe of individual life. It is the supreme awareness of awareness itself.
Norman Cousins
Image
In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.
Norman Cousins
Image
The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's one devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.
Norman Cousins
Image
Although a man may have no jurisdiction over the fact of his existence, he can hold supreme command over the meaning of existence for him.
Norman Cousins
Image
We are becoming a nation of sissies and hypochondriacs, a self medicating society easily intimidated by pain and prone to panic. We understand almost nothing about the essential robustness of the human body or its ability to meet the challenge of illness.
Norman Cousins
Image
Laughter serves as a blocking agent. Like a bullet-proof vest, it may help protect you against the ravages of negative emotions that can assault you in disease.
Norman Cousins
Image
I've learned that next to the atomic bomb, the greatest danger is defeatism, despair, and inadequate awareness of what human beings possess. I feel that any problem that can be defined is capable of being resolved. Out of this has come my conviction that no person knows enough to be a pessimist.
Norman Cousins
Image
The control center of your life is your attitude.
Norman Cousins
Image
Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its effects, present or ultimate, seen or unseen, felt or unfelt.
Norman Cousins
Image
The possibility of war increases in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the instruments of war.
Norman Cousins
Image
Death is not the enemy living in constant fear of it is.
Norman Cousins
Image
Don't defy the diagnosis, try to defy the verdict.
Norman Cousins
Image
Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.
Norman Cousins
Image
The essence of man is imperfection. Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. If we learn to embrace that new definition of failure, then we are free to start moving ahead - and failing forward.
Norman Cousins
Image
What was significant about the laughter . . . was not just the fact that it provides internal exercise for a person . . . form of jogging for the innards, but that it creates a mood in which the other positive emotions can be put to work, too.
Norman Cousins
Image
We are wide-eyed in contemplating the possibility that life may exist elsewhere in the universe, but we wear blinders when contemplating the possibilities of life on earth.
Norman Cousins
Image
All this sensory input, which begins in the brain, has its effect throughout the body.
Norman Cousins
Image
He who keeps his cool best wins.
Norman Cousins