The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
—Garrison Keillor (b.1942) American Author, Humorist, Radio Personality
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
If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.
—Laurence Sterne (1713–68) Irish Anglican Novelist, Clergyman
When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
—Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American Novelist, Editor, Academic
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
In a real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.
—S. I. Hayakawa (1906–92) Canadian-born American Academic, Elected Rep, Politician
Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.
—Louis L’Amour (1908–88) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
—Anatole France (1844–1924) French Novelist
A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
—John Milton (1608–74) English Poet, Civil Servant, Scholar, Debater
Literature is without proofs. By which it must be understood that it cannot prove, not only what it says, but even that it is worth the trouble of saying it.
—Roland Barthes (1915–80) French Literary Theorist, Philosopher, Critic
Books that have become classics — books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal — always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.
—Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American Poet, Novelist, Traveler, Editor
A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug.
—George Borrow (1803–81) English Novelist, Author
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
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
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
I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
It is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times. If you are presently without, hurry without delay to the nearest shop and buy one of mine.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
In literature, as in love, we are astonished at the choice made by other people.
—Andre Maurois (1885–1967) French Novelist, Biographer
A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.
—Iris Murdoch (1919–99) English Novelist, Philosopher
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 (1884–1962) French Philosopher, Psychoanalyst, Poet
Everything you need for your better future and success has already been written. And guess what? It’s all available. All you have to do is go to the library.
—Jim Rohn (1930–2009) American Entrepreneur, Author, Motivational Speaker
Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.
—Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) English Politician, Barrister, Academic, Author
Literature flourishes best when it is half trade and half an art.
—William Motter Inge (1913–73) American Playwright, Novelist, Screenwriter
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
—Charles William Eliot (1834–1926) American Educator, Academic
Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.
—Ford Madox Ford (1873?1939) English Novelist, Poet, Critic
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
There was a time when the average reader read a novel simply for the moral he could get out of it, and however naive that may have been, it was a good deal less naive than some of the limited objectives he has now. Today novels are considered to be entirely concerned with the social or economic or psychological forces that they will by necessity exhibit, or with those details of daily life that are for the good novelist only means to some deeper end.
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American Novelist
Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.
—William Wycherley (1640–1715) English Dramatist
There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.
—P. D. James (b.1920) British Novelist
One learns little more about a man from his feats of literary memory than from the feats of his alimentary canal.
—Frank Moore Colby (1865–1925) American Educator, Writer
Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
Literature is the immortality of speech.
—August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767–1845) German Poet, Literary Critic, Scholar
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason: they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. Those works, therefore, are the most valuable, that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation. understand them.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.
—Steven Spielberg (b.1946) American Film Director, Screenwriter, Film Producer, Businessperson
The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV programs; or cartoons. What is essential in a novel is precisely what can only be expressed in a novel, and so every adaptation contains nothing but the non-essential. If a person is still crazy enough to write novels nowadays and wants to protect them, he has to write them in such a way that they cannot be adapted, in other words, in such a way that they cannot be retold.
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul.
—Cicero (106BCE–43BCE) Roman Philosopher, Orator, Politician, Lawyer
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
—Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) American Teacher, Writer, Philosopher
It is the story-teller’s task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.
—Graham Greene (1904–91) British Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
—Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American Philosopher, Educator, Author
What gunpowder did for war, the printing press has done for the mind; the statesman is no longer clad in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his judge.
—Wendell Phillips (1811–84) American Abolitionist, Lawyer, Orator
You will, I am sure, agree with me that… if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.
—Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish Writer
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Journalist, Short Story Writer, Novelist, Essayist
The great standard of literature, as to purity and exactness of style, is the Bible.
—Hugh Blair (1718–1800) Scottish Preacher, Scholar, Critic
The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and the afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and places and how the weather was.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.
—Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) South African Political leader
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Congregationalist Clergyman, Writer
Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.
—William Temple (1881–1944) British Clergyman, Theologian
The newest books are those that never grow old.
—Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948) British Journalist, Writer, Publisher
Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.
—Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948) British Journalist, Writer, Publisher
A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.
—Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American Actor, Comedian, Singer
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
The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you. It may happen that it will yield you an unexpected delight, but this will be in its own uninterrupted way in spite of your good intentions.
—William Dean Howells (1837–1920) American Novelist, Short story Author, Editor
Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from becoming a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, compose our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.
—Jeremy Collier (1650–1726) Anglican Church Historian, Clergyman
A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can’t expect an apostle to look out.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don’t slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.
—Pablo Neruda (1904–73) Chilean Poet, Diplomat, Political leader
Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
The decline of literature indicates the decline of the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
—Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American Actor, Comedian, Singer
In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.
—Humphrey Carpenter (1946–2005) English Children’s Books Writer, Biographer, Author, Radio Personality
When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.
—Harold S. Geneen (1910–1997) British-American Businessman
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
The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
—William Dean Howells (1837–1920) American Novelist, Short story Author, Editor
A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
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
A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
—Franz Kafka (1883–1924) Austrian Novelist, Short Story Writer
A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever.
—Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–89) English Poet, Writer
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
—Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American Philosopher, Educator, Author
People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.
—John Wesley (1703–91) British Methodist Religious Leader, Preacher, Theologian
The past but lives in written words: a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American Poet, Playwright, Feminist
Beware of the person of one book.
—Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) Italian Catholic Priest, Philosopher, Theologian
If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly in hand before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.
—Anne Frank (1929–45) Holocaust Victim
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
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) Canada Journalist, Playwright, Academic, Critic, Novelist
If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canada Journalist, Playwright, Academic, Critic, Novelist
Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead.
—Van Wyck Brooks (1886–1963) American Literary Critic, Biographer, Historian
Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
A novel points out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.
—Joyce Cary (1888–1957) Irish Novelist, Artist
The principle of procrastinated rape is said to be the ruling one in all the great bestsellers.
—V. S. Pritchett (1900–97) British Short Story Writer, Biographer, Memoirist, Literary Critic
Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!
—Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) Italian Dramatist, Novelist, Short Story Writer, Author
The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
—Frank Lane (1896–1981) American Sportsperson, Businessperson
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
—Harper Lee (1926–2016) American Novelist
When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.
—Desiderius Erasmus (c.1469–1536) Dutch Humanist, Scholar
Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.
—Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) British Novelist
To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations—such is a pleasure beyond compare.
—Yoshida Kenko (1283–1352) Japanese Poet, Essayist
A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.
—George Gissing (1857–1903) English Novelist
For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
—Franz Kafka (1883–1924) Austrian Novelist, Short Story Writer
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honorable to which a man can be called?
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) English Occultist, Mystic, Magician
It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.
—Vincent van Gogh (1853–90) Dutch Painter
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Novelist, Dramatist, Playwright, Artist
I had always imagined paradise as a kind of library.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
My only objection to the custom of giving books as Christmas presents is perhaps the selfish one that it encourages and keeps in the game a number of writers who would be far better employed if they abandoned the pen and took to work.
—P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) British Novelist, Short-story Writer, Playwright
My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French Philosopher, Psychoanalyst, Poet
This habit of reading … is your pass to the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for his creatures. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.
—Anthony Trollope (1815–82) English Novelist
From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover you have wings.
—Helen Hayes (1900–93) American Actor, Philanthropist
Remarks are not literature.
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American Writer
A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality—the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
—A. C. Benson (1862–1925) English Essayist, Poet, Author
The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Journalist, Short Story Writer, Novelist, Essayist
A good book is always on tap; it may be decanted and drunk a hundred times, and it is still there for further imbibement.
—Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948) British Journalist, Writer, Publisher
There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.
—Isaac D’Israeli (1766–1848) English Writer, Scholar
When you publish a book, it’s the world’s book. The world edits it.
—Philip Roth (1933–2018) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
My Alma mater was books, a good library… I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
—Malcolm X (1925–65) American Civil Rights Leader
One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
One sheds one’s sicknesses in books—repeats and presents again one’s emotions, to be master of them.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.
—Nelson Algren (1909–81) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.
—Walt Disney (1901–66) American Entrepreneur
Books and proverbs receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.
—William Temple (1881–1944) British Clergyman, Theologian