A cool set of book quotes

Some people don’t believe that I collect quotes so here is a selection:

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like. ~ Abraham Lincoln

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books. ~ Albert Camus

For books are more than books, they are the life
The very heart and core of ages past,
The reason why men lived and worked and died,
The essence and quintessence of their lives.
~ Boston Athenaeum – Amy Lowell

All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
~ Sword Blades and Poppy Seed – Amy Lowell

I have a real soft spot in my heart for librarians and people who care about books. Ann Richards

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. ~ Barbara Tuchman

There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it. ~ Bertrand Russell

A room without books is like a body without a soul. ~ Cicero

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you. ~ Daniel J. Boorstein

I don’t think one can accurately measure the historical effectiveness of a poem; but one does know, of course, that books influence individuals; and individuals, although they are part of large economic and social processes, influence history. Every mass is after all made up of millions of individuals. ~ Denise Levertov

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it. ~ Elizabeth Drew

The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you the knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away.
~ Emily Dickinson

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed on and digested. ~ Francis Bacon

Readers are plentiful, thinkers are rare. ~ Harriet Martineau

I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read about the effects of smoking that he gave up reading. ~ Henry G. Strauss

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum — of both books and money! But especially books, for books represent infinitely more than money. A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold. ~ Henry Miller

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books. ~ Katharine Mansfield

Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier. ~ Kathleen Norris

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. ~ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Do give books – religious or otherwise – for Christmas. They’re never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal. ~ Lenore Hershey

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain. ~ Louisa May Alcott

A house is no home unless it contain food and fire for the mind as well as for the body. ~ Margaret Fuller

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn’t because the book is not there and worth being written — it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself. ~ Mark Twain

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. ~ Mark Twain

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. ~ Mortimer Adler

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life. ~ Mortimer Adler

Our house was a temple to The Book. We owned thousands, nay millions of books. They lined the walls, filled the cupboards, and turned the floor into a maze far more complex than Hampton Court’s. Books ruled our lives. They were our demigods. ~ Nick Bantock

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas—a place where history comes to life. ~ Norman Cousins

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. ~ Oscar Wilde

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, the worst. What is the right use? What is the end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some books leave us free and some books make us free. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty. ~ Theodore Parker

[A] lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools. ~ Thomas Jefferson

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy the intercourse with superior minds… In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most previous thought, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. ~ William Ellery Channing

“Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.” ~ Stephan Mallarme

“Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read.” ~ Isaiah 34:16

“The road to knowledge begins with the turn of the page.” ~ Anonymous

“The sensation felt when touching paper differs from the coldness of metal or
the perfection of plastic as it radiates a core warmth that we expect to come
from a living object. Each fiber greets our hands in a comfortable, familiar
tradition that we were introduced to as children, and constantly thereafter in
school and at work. Most of the paper we use is bleached perfectly white with
just enough texture to reliably meet the rubber rollers of a copy machine. Yet
once in a while we are fortunate enough to encounter the kind of graphic design
that not only visually stimulates, but that we can also taste with.”
~ The Reactive Square – John Maeda

“A book is a human-powered film projector (complete with feature film) that
advances at a speed fully customized to the viewer’s mood or fancy. This rare harmony between object and user arises from the minimal skills required to manipulate a bound sequence of pages. Each piece of paper embodies a
corresponding instant of time which remains frozen until liberated by the
act of turning a page.” ~ The Reactive Square – John Maeda

“We read about 1,000 times more than we write.” ~ Xerox PARC – Rich Gold

“We think of an eBook as an intelligent pet.” ~ BeeHive Hypertext – Talan Memmot

“Reading surrounds us, labels us, defines us.” ~ Xerox PARC – Rich Gold

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.” ~ St. Augustine

“It took people 10 years to figure out that while stuck in a morning commute, they could be listening to a book.” ~ Publishers Weekly – Paul Hilts

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” ~ Alvin Toffler

“Change can be scary. When papyrus replaced clay tablets, and the Gutenberg press calligraphy, did a bit of panic set in? Are we in the midst of a revolution of similar proportion? Very probably.” ~ Susan McLester

A popular admonition goes “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Yet we do it all the time. We ascribe qualities of character to people based on their physical characteristics. And our language takes shape to reflect that attitude. ~ Anu Garg

“A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas—a place where history comes to life.” ~ Norman Cousins

“We should not see print and electronic literature as in competition, but rather in conversation. The more voices that join in, the richer the dialogue is likely to be.”
~ N. Katherine Hayles

“A good library is a palace where the lofty spirits of all nations and generations meet.” ~ Samuel Niger

“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” ~ Jorge Luis Borges

“The public library is the most dangerous place in town.” ~ John Ciardi

“A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher

“If information is the currency of democracy, then libraries are the banks.”
~ Wendell Ford

“Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won’t come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.” ~ Leo Tolstoy

“A circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge!”
~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan

“The closest thing we will ever come to an orderly universe is a good library.”
~ Ashleigh Brilliant

“Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission.” ~ Toni Morrison

“The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history. ~ Carl Thomas Rowan

“Throughout my formal education I spent many, many hours in public and school libraries. Libraries became the courts of last resort, as it were. The current definitive answer to almost any question can be found within the four walls of most libraries.” ~ Arthur Ashe

“I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.” ~ Carl Sagan

“The printed page transcends space and time. The printed page, the infinity of the book, must be transcended.” ~ The Electro-Library – El Lissitzky

“When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will
have knowledge.” ~ The Book of the Book – Idries Shah

“Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” ~ Ecclesiastes 12:12

“Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face,
And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen.
Examine every married lineament,
And see how one another lends content,
And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margin of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him, only lacks a cover.
The fish lives in the sea, and ’tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory
That in golden clasps locks in the story.
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him making yourself no less.”
Lady Capulet talking to Juliet, compares the young lover’s face
to a most captivating book and invites her to read in it with delight.
~ Romeo and Juliet – William Shakespeare

“The body of Benjamin Franklin
Printer,
Like the covering
Of an old book
Its contents torn out
And stript of its lettering
And gilding
Lies here, food for worms;
But the work
Shall not be lost,
It will (as he believed)
Appear once more,
In a new
And more beautiful edition,
Corrected and amended
By the author.”
~ Epitaph for Benjamin Franklin

“Books may well be the only true magic.” ~ Alice Hoffman

“Books are the carriers of civilization…They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.” ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

“I grew up kissing books and bread.” ~ Imaginary Homelands – Salman Rushdie

“A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.” ~ Imaginary Homelands – Salman Rushdie

“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

“Real education consists in drawing the best out of yourself. What better book can there be than the book of humanity?” Mohandas K. Gandhi

“The true university of these days is a collection of books.” The Hero as Man of Letters – Thomas Carlyle

“What is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”
~ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

“For books are more than books. They are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.” ~ Amy Lowell

“The age of the book is about gone.” ~ George Steiner

“I cannot live without books.” ~ In a letter to John Adams – Thomas Jefferson

“If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” ~ Toni Morrison

“Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.” ~Maxim Gorky

“I find television very educational. Every time someone turns it on, I go in the other room and read a book.” ~ Groucho Marx

“There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight.” ~ ABC of Reading – Ezra Pound

“Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.”
~ George Bernard Shaw

“What in the world would we do without our libraries?” ~ Katharine Hepburn

“I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit
in a library.” ~ The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.”
~ Almansor – Heinrich Heine

“Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons.” ~ Message to the American Booksellers Association – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“Even bad books are books, and therefore sacred.” ~ The Tin Drum – Gunther Grass

“God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.” ~ The Strange Necessity – Rebecca West

“The portability of the book, like that of the easel painting, added much to the new cult of individualism.” ~ The Gutenburg Galaxy – Marshall McLuhan

“A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.”
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Still, the E-book is not a passing thing, but here to stay as it becomes cheaper and improved. Nonetheless, it is really no more than a screen upon which to read, and it is clear that when enough people start reading them, electronic books will do for the ophthalmologists what taffy and caramels did for dentists.” ~ The New York Times – Martin Arnold

“Classic—a book people praise and don’t read.” Following the Equator – Mark ~ Twain

“Every book is a failure.” ~ George Orwell

“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”
~ Charles Dickens

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.”
~ Franz Kafka

“Every man must die sooner or later, but good books must be preserved.”
~ Don Vincente

“You can never be too thin, too rich, or have too many books.” ~ Vogue – Carter Burden

“Book-love, I say again, lasts throughout life, it never flags or fails, but, like Beauty itself, is a joy forever.” ~ The Anatomy of Bibliomana Vol.II – Holbrook Jackson

“The written word remains. The spoken word takes wing and cannot be recalled.” ~ Anonymous

“Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.” ~ John Ruskin

“Old books, you know well, are books of the world’s youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Books in a large university library system: 2, 000,000. Books in an average large city library: 1 0,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30, 000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20, 000.” ~ Lois Horowitz

“There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.” ~ Oscar Wilde

“Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts — the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.” ~ John Ruskin

“The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine — but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.” ~Sir Arthur Keith

“Some books leave us free and some books make us free.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last. ” ~ John Ruskin

“The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy; The books that people talk about we never can recall; And the books that people give us, oh, they’re the worst of all.” ~Carolyn Wells

“In every fat book there is a thin book trying to get out.” ~ Unknown