A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
—Franz Kafka (1883–1924) Austrian Novelist, Short Story Writer
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
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
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
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
—Garrison Keillor (b.1942) American Author, Humorist, Radio Personality
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
Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French Philosopher, Psychoanalyst, Poet
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
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) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Humorist
A novel points out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.
—Joyce Cary (1888–1957) Irish Novelist, Artist
I had always imagined paradise as a kind of library.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
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
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 Scientist, Critic, Writer
The great standard of literature, as to purity and exactness of style, is the Bible.
—Hugh Blair (1718–1800) Scottish Clergyman, Rhetorician, Literary Critic, Philosopher
A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American Poet, Playwright, Feminist
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
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
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Scientist, Critic, Writer
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
Literature flourishes best when it is half trade and half an art.
—William Motter Inge (1913–73) American Playwright, Novelist, Screenwriter
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
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
Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry.
—Earl of Chesterfield
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
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
Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.
—Iris Murdoch (1919–99) English Novelist, Philosopher
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 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 Scientist, Critic, Writer
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
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
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
—Harper Lee (1926–2006) American Novelist
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
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
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
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
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
If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
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
Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
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
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
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
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
People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
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
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
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
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
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
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
When you publish a book, it’s the world’s book. The world edits it.
—Philip Roth (1933–2018) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Novelist, Dramatist, Playwright, Artist
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, 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
A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever.
—Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–89) English Poet, Writer
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
—Franz Kafka (1883–1924) Austrian Novelist, Short Story Writer
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
My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
—Frank Lane (1896–1981) American Sportsperson, Businessperson
Remarks are not literature.
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American Writer
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
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
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
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
Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.
—Ford Madox Ford (1873