Quotes about Books

If we could live a thousand years, and experience a thousand relationships in the thousand times and places and cultures, perhaps we wouldn't need books in order to (eventually) become wise. But our lives are short, and God has been merciful to give us many places, many times, many cultures, and many experiences distilled into books. Find the ones that strengthen your faith and make you want to live all-out for God.

Books don't change people; paragraphs do, Sometimes even sentences.

Reading is more important to me than eating.

Across time and generations, books carry the thoughts and feelings, the essence, of the human spirit.

... that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them. (Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing 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.

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

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.

A visitor to Mark Twain's house in Hartford observed mountains of books stacked on the floor. The author apologized for the disorder. You see, he lamented, It is so very difficult to borrow shelves.

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books; for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart. I will keep this diligently in my remembrance, that this day's lesson be not lost upon me, and my people suffer thereby; for learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.