Famous Quotes about Books and Reading (371 Quotations)

The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead.

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

Then I though of reading — the nice and subtle happiness of reading … this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?

There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

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.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

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

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.

This book fills a much-needed gap.