Quotes on books
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
Kafka, Franz
There's nothing to match curling up with a good book when there's a repair job to be done around the house.
Ryan, Joe
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
Beecher, Henry Ward
Books have to be read: worse luck it takes so long a time. It is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West.
Forster, E.M.
Americans like fat books and thin women.
Baker, Russell
The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.
MacDonald, Ross
Unto those Three Things which the Ancients held impossible, there should be added this Fourth, to find a Book Printed without erratas.
de Cartagena, Alfonso
The mere brute pleasure of reading - the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.
Chesterfield, Earl of
For friends... do but look upon good Books: they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble.
Bacon, Francis
Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.
LeCarre, John
A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.
Styron, William
A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
Proverb, Chinese
I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command.
Petrarch, Francesco
As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!
James, William
A blessed companion is a book, - a book that, fitly chosen, is a lifelong friend, - a book that, at a touch, pours its heart into our own.
Jerrold, Douglas
Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life.
Bennett, Jesse Lee
A house without books is like a room without windows.
Mann, Heinrich
From my point of view, a book is a literary prescription put up for the benefit of someone who needs it.
Crothers, S.M.
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.
Swartz, J.
To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor's prohibited list.
Aikin, John
That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with profit.
Alcott, Amos Bronson
A good book is always on tap; it may be decanted and drunk a hundred times, and it is still there for further imbibement.
Jackson, Holbrook
Bread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book.
Ruskin, John
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Smith, Logan Pearsall