The great standard of literature, as to purity and exactness of style, is the Bible.
—Hugh Blair (1718–1800) Scottish Preacher, Scholar, Critic
There are books which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it’s always just one person encountering the book, it’s not an audience, it’s one to one.
—Paul Auster (b.1947) American Novelist, Poet, Film Director
Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
A best-seller is the golden touch of mediocre talent.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) American-British Essayist, Bibliophile
He who lends a book is an idiot. He who returns the book is more of an idiot.
—Arabic Proverb
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
—Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American Philosopher, Educator
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, and what is the use of a book thought Alice, without pictures or conversations?
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832–98) British Anglican Author, Mathematician, Clergyman, Photographer, Logician
We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.
—Tryon Edwards American Theologian
There is no worse robber than a bad book.
—Italian Proverb
A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
The book borrower…proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures…as by his failure to read these books.
—Walter Benjamin
If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American Poet
Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death hath no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.
—Unknown
Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
Good books don’t give up all their secrets at once.
—Stephen King (b.1947) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Screenwriter, Columnist, Film Director
Wear the old coat and buy the new book.
—Austin Phelps (1820–90) American Presbyterian Clergyman, Educator, Theologian
Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read.
—Indian Proverb
Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
How can you dare teach a man to read until you’ve taught him everything else first?
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German-born Swiss Novelist, Poet
What is reading, but silent conversation.
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) English Writer, Poet
Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher