•“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

•“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

•“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” 
― Oscar Wilde

•“People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book.” 
― Malcolm X

•“I cannot live without books.” 
― Thomas Jefferson

•“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.” 
― Abraham Lincoln

•“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

•“We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.” 
― Jules Verne

•“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.” 
― Cassandra Clare

•“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.” 
― Walt Disney

•“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.” 
― G.K. Chesterton

•“It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language” 
― Jane Austen

•“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.” 
― Madeleine L'Engle

•“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” 
― Augustine of Hippo

•“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.” 
― Ezra Pound

•“I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.” 
― L.M. Montgomery

•“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

•“Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.” 
― Hermann Hesse

•“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.” 
― Mark Twain

•“Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!” 
― Neil Gaiman

•“My grandma always said that God made libraries so that people didn't have any excuse to be stupid.” 
― Joan Bauer

•“Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me.” 
― Anatole France

•“Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.” 
― James Russell Lowell

•“Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose.” 
― Neil Gaiman

•“What better place to kill time than a library?” 
― Diane Setterfield

•“Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.” 
― Voltaire

•“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.” 
― G.K. Chesterton

•“The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read.” 
― Benjamin Franklin

•“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.” 
― François Mauriac

•“You cannot open a book without learning something.” 
― Confucius

•“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.” 
― Mark Twain

•“Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.” 
― George Bernard Shaw

•“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

•“My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.” 
― Abraham Lincoln

•“Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.” 
― Ezra Pound

•“Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.” 
― J.K. Rowling

•“That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” 
― Jhumpa Lahiri

•“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” 
― James Baldwin

•A house without books is like a room without windows.” 
― Horace Mann

•“I only read biographies, metaphysics and psychology. I can dream up my own fiction.” 
― Mae West

•“If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?” 
― Jerry Seinfeld

•“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.” 
― René Descartes

•“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” 
― Anna Quindlen

•“If you cannot read all your books...fondle them---peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.” 
― Winston Churchill

•“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.” 
― C.S. Lewis

•“One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.” 
― George W. Bush

•“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” 
― Oscar Wilde

•“Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.” 
― Thomas Jefferson

•“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” 
― Fran Lebowitz

•“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” 
― Jessamyn West

•“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.” 
― John Green

•“Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.” 
― Judy Blume

•“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” 
― Jane Austen

•“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.” 
― Henry David Thoreau

•“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” 
― Haruki Murakami

•“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.” 
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón

•“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” 
― Groucho Marx

•“A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic can pass a bar.” 
― Carolyn G. Heilbrun

•“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” 
― Jane Austen