"For me, books have been a life-long resource--to learning, laughter, solace, excitement, inspiration. At your library, the world awaits you, free for the asking."
--Lady Bird Johnson
"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)
"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
"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested."
—Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
"The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers."
—Stan Barstow
"The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command."
—Walter Benjamin
"A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators."
—Malcolm Bradbury (b.1932)
"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."
—Joseph Brodsky
"To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting."
—Edmund Burke
"A truly great book should be read in youth, once 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 (1913-1995)
"There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing."
—Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848)
"Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"If the riches of the Indies, or the crowns of all the kingdom of Europe, were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading, I would spurn them all."
—Francois FéNelon
"Read in order to live."
—Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
"Today a reader, tomorrow a leader."
—W. Fusselman
"The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination."
—Elizabeth Hardwick (b.1916)
"The time to read is any time: no apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary. It is the only art which can be practised at any hour of the day or night, whenever the time and inclination comes, that is your time for reading; in joy or sorrow, health or illness."
—Holbrook Jackson (1874-1948)
"I am a part of everything that I have read."
—John Kieran
"For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time."
—Louis L'amour (1908-1988)
Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare."
—Harriet Martineau
"The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think."
—James McCosh
"We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate."
—Henry Miller (1891-1980)
"No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting."
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762)
"Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere."
—Hazel Rochman
"We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading."
—B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)
"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writing so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for."
—Socrates (469-399 BC)
"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."
—Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance."
—Atwood H. Townsend
"He who destroys a good book kills reason itself."
—John Milton
"A library is a hospital for the mind."
—Anonymous
"Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house."
—Henry Ward Beecher
"If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.
—Edward Gibbon
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry…
—Emily Dickinson
"The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity."
—Thomas Carlyle
"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes."
—Erasmus
"We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge."
—John Naisbitt
"Make the most of yourself...for that is all there is of you."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
I've traveled the world twice over,
Met the famous; saints and sinners,
Poets and artists, kings and queens,
Old stars and hopeful beginners,
I've been where no-one's been before,
Learned secrets from writers and cooks
All with one library ticket
To the wonderful world of books.
—Unknown