“I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.”
“Borrowers of books --those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.”
“I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.”
“From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.”
“The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.”
“I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.”
“At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.”
“No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.”
“When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.”
“He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.”
“I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.”
“Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.”
“The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.”
“A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.”
“A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.”
“Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book --I call that vicious!”
“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.”
“If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that.”
“We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.”
“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”
“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.”
“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.”
“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.”
“God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.”
“The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.”
“Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.”
“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.”
“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.”
“I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.”
“Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.”