When you sell a man a book, you don’t sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life.
—Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American Novelist, Essayist
A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You should live several lives while reading it.
—William Styron (1925–2006) American Novelist, Essayist, Writer
Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.
—Ford Madox Ford (1873?1939) English Novelist, Poet, Critic
He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
—John Aubrey (1626–97) English Antiquary, Biographer, Folklorist
How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American Poet
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
There is but one way left to save a classic: to give up revering him and use him for our own salvation.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish Critic, Journalist, Philosopher
No book can be so good as to be profitable when negligently read.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again—for, like true friends, they will never fail us—never cease to instruct—never cloy—Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.
—Richard de Bury
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.
—Hannah More
My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine—everybody drinks water.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
My Alma mater was books, a good library… I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
—Malcolm X (1925–65) American Civil Rights Leader
Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Books are the metempsychosis; the symbol and presage of immortality.—The dead are scattered, and none shall find them; but behold they are here.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
My books kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon.—The associate of Pope and Addison, the mind accustomed to the noble though silent discourse of Shakespeare and Milton, will hardly seek or put up with low or evil company and slaves.
—Thomas Hood (1799–1845) English Poet, Humorist
A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
—Franz Kafka (1883–1924) Austrian Novelist, Short Story Writer
The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.
—Frank Hall Crane (1873–1948) American Stage and Film Actor, Director
Books are the shoes with which we tread the footsteps of great minds.
—Indian Proverb
Read in order to live.
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) French Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
Any kid who has two parents who are interested in him and a houseful of books isn’t poor.
—Sam Levenson (1911–80) American Humorist, Writer, TV Personality, Journalist
Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Political Leader, Writer, Editor, Journalist
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
—Franz Kafka (1883–1924) Austrian Novelist, Short Story Writer
To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French Philosopher, Psychoanalyst, Poet
If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, and the people do not become religious, I do not know what is to become of us as a nation. And the thought is one to cause solemn reflection on the part of every patriot and Christian. If truth be not diffused, error will be; if God and his word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy; if the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will; if the power of the gospel is not felt through the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness, will reign without mitigation or end.
—Daniel Webster (1782–1852) American Statesman, Lawyer
Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.
—Octavio Paz (1914–98) Mexican Poet, Diplomat
The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
How can you dare teach a man to read until you’ve taught him everything else first?
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
One must be an inventor to read well.—As the proverb says, “He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the In dies.”—There is creative reading as well as creative writing.—When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
Deep versed in books, but shallow in himself.
—John Milton (1608–74) English Poet, Civil Servant, Scholar, Debater
It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.
—Vincent van Gogh (1853–90) Dutch Painter
I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.
—James Thurber
There is no robber worse than a bad book.
—Italian Proverb
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
—Harper Lee (1926–2016) American Novelist
A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.
—Charles Lamb (1775–1834) British Essayist, Poet
I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
In books, it is the chief of all perfections to be plain and brief.
—Samuel Butler
The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, nations perish, civilizations grow old and die out, and after an era of darkness new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead.
—Clarence Day (1874–1935) American Author, Humorist
With one day’s reading a man may have the key in his hands.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American Head of State, Military Leader