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
Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.
—Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) English Political Philosopher
A book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list.
—John Aikin (1747–1822) British Doctor, Writer
The newest books are those that never grow old.
—Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948) British Journalist, Writer, Publisher
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
Miss a meal if you have to, but don’t miss a book.
—Jim Rohn (1930–2009) American Entrepreneur, Author, Motivational Speaker
Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canadian Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
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
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
I’ve never know any trouble than an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.
—Montesquieu (1689–1755) French Political Philosopher, Jurist
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
What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.
—Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948) British Journalist, Writer, Publisher
Reading without purpose is sauntering, not exercise. More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye. A cottage flower gives honey to the bee, a king’s garden none to the butterfly.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur “Thou still unravished bride of quietness,” then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary.
—Terry Eagleton
What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.
—Jonathan Miller (1934–2019) English Theatre Director, Author
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
Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
He that loves not books before he comes to thirty years of age, will hardly love them enough afterward to understand them.
—Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609–74) English Statesman, Historian
You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.
—Paul Sweeney
Books are true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race.
—William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet
By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) French Historian, Political Scientist
The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Literature is the human activity that make the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty.
—Lionel Trilling (1905–75) American Literary Critic
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
Except a living man. there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from the dead—from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.
—Charles Kingsley (1819–75) English Clergyman, Academic, Historian, Novelist
Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
—C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) Irish-born British Academic, Author, Literary Scholar