Quotes about Books

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

Abraham Lincoln

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Albert Camus

For books are more than books, they are the life, The very heart and core of ages past, The reason why men lived and worked and died, The essence and quintessence of their lives.

Amy Lowell

All books are either dreams or swords, You can cut, or you can drug, with words.

Amy Lowell

I have a real soft spot in my heart for librarians and people who care about books.

Ann Richards

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

Barbara Tuchman

There are two motives for reading a book one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

Bertrand Russell

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Cicero

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.

Daniel J. Boorstein

I don't think one can accurately measure the historical effectiveness of a poem; but one does know, of course, that books influence individuals; and individuals, although they are part of large economic and social processes, influence history. Every mass is after all made up of millions of individuals.

Denise Levertov

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.

Elizabeth Drew

The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you the knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

Elizabeth Hardwick

There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away.

Emily Dickinson

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed on and digested.

Francis Bacon

Readers are plentiful, thinkers are rare.

Harriet Martineau

I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read about the effects of smoking that he gave up reading.

Henry G. Strauss

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum -- of both books and money! But especially books, for books represent infinitely more than money. A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.

Henry Miller

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

Henry Ward Beecher

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Katharine Mansfield

Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

Kathleen Norris

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Do give books - religious or otherwise - for Christmas. They're never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal.

Lenore Hershey

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.

Louisa May Alcott

A house is no home unless it contain food and fire for the mind as well as for the body.

Margaret Fuller

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.

Mark Twain

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience this is the ideal life.

Mark Twain

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

Mortimer Adler

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Mortimer Adler

Our house was a temple to The Book. We owned thousands, nay millions of books. They lined the walls, filled the cupboards, and turned the floor into a maze far more complex than Hampton Court's. Books ruled our lives. They were our demigods.

Nick Bantock

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas

Norman Cousins

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

Oscar Wilde

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, the worst. What is the right use? What is the end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satelite instead of a system.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Theodore Parker

[A] lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools.

Thomas Jefferson

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy the intercourse with superior minds... In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most previous thought, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books.

William Ellery Channing

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

Abraham Lincoln

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Albert Camus

For books are more than books, they are the life, The very heart and core of ages past, The reason why men lived and worked and died, The essence and quintessence of their lives.

Amy Lowell

All books are either dreams or swords, You can cut, or you can drug, with words.

Amy Lowell

I have a real soft spot in my heart for librarians and people who care about books.

Ann Richards

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

Barbara Tuchman

There are two motives for reading a book one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

Bertrand Russell

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Cicero

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.

Daniel J. Boorstein

I don't think one can accurately measure the historical effectiveness of a poem; but one does know, of course, that books influence individuals; and individuals, although they are part of large economic and social processes, influence history. Every mass is after all made up of millions of individuals.

Denise Levertov

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.

Elizabeth Drew

The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you the knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

Elizabeth Hardwick

There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away.

Emily Dickinson

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed on and digested.

Francis Bacon

Readers are plentiful, thinkers are rare.

Harriet Martineau

I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read about the effects of smoking that he gave up reading.

Henry G. Strauss

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum -- of both books and money! But especially books, for books represent infinitely more than money. A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.

Henry Miller

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

Henry Ward Beecher

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Katharine Mansfield

Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

Kathleen Norris

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Do give books - religious or otherwise - for Christmas. They're never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal.

Lenore Hershey

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.

Louisa May Alcott

A house is no home unless it contain food and fire for the mind as well as for the body.

Margaret Fuller

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.

Mark Twain

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience this is the ideal life.

Mark Twain

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

Mortimer Adler

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Mortimer Adler

Our house was a temple to The Book. We owned thousands, nay millions of books. They lined the walls, filled the cupboards, and turned the floor into a maze far more complex than Hampton Court's. Books ruled our lives. They were our demigods.

Nick Bantock

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas

Norman Cousins

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

Oscar Wilde

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, the worst. What is the right use? What is the end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satelite instead of a system.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Theodore Parker

[A] lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools.

Thomas Jefferson

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy the intercourse with superior minds... In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most previous thought, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books.

William Ellery Channing