BOOK QUOTES VIII

quotations about books

Books are but pictures--the world is their original; to know the former well, we must necessarily have much acquaintance with the colors and shades of the latter.

NORMAN MACDONALD

Maxims and Moral Reflections


Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.

NICHOLSON BAKER

attributed, New York Times Book Review, 1994


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

Northanger Abbey


The covers of this book are too far apart.

AMBROSE BIERCE

The Devil's Dictionary


So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall.

ROALD DAHL

The Telegraph, Sep. 13, 2011


One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books.

GRAHAM GREENE

Travels with My Aunt


McDonald’s has announced that for the next month in the United Kingdom, Happy Meals will come with a book instead of a toy. And they will be renamed "Disappointment Meals."

JIMMY KIMMEL

Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Jan. 12, 2012


What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

J. D. SALINGER

The Catcher in the Rye


Are not good books honey-comb from the bee-hives of industry, handed down to us to sweeten our lives and help us aim to higher attainments of happiness? Are not good books white-winged messengers of love and good cheer, coming out of the past to cheer and strengthen us for the duties and responsibilities of life? Are not good books the golden settings of gems of truth and diamonds of knowledge prepared for our diadems of rejoicing and crowns of victory? Are not good books so many angel gifts sent to sweeten the bitterness of human life?

NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY

Helps to Happiness


Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

JOSEPH ADDISON

The Spectator, Sep. 10, 1711


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

CHARLES DICKENS

Oliver Twist


All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.

AMY LOWELL

Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds


Parents should leave books lying around marked "forbidden" if they want their children to read.

DORIS LESSING

The Times, Nov. 23, 2003


No two persons ever read the same book, or saw the same picture.

MADAME SWETCHINE

"Airelles,", The Writings of Madame Swetchine


The prosperity of a book lies in the minds of readers. Public knowledge and public taste fluctuate; and there come times when works which were once capable of instructing and delighting thousands lose their power, and works, before neglected, emerge into renown.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES

The Principles of Success in Literature


An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only.

C. S. LEWIS

"On Stories", Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories


I am sure everyone has had the experience of reading a book and finding it vibrating with aliveness, with colour and immediacy. And then, perhaps some weeks later, reading it again and finding it flat and empty. Well, the book hasn't changed: you have.

DORIS LESSING

Time Bites


Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

"Partial Magic in the Quixote," Labyrinths


The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger (tutor to Nero) complained that his peers were wasting time and money accumulating too many books, admonishing that "the abundance of books is a distraction." Instead, Seneca recommended focusing on a limited number of good books, to be read thoroughly and repeatedly.

DANIEL J. LEVITIN

The Organized Mind


Sometimes you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read that book.

JOHN GREEN

The Fault in Our Stars