7,712 Quotes About Books

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... 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.

One thing I will surely miss is that I couldn't read all the good books in this lifetime.

As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Viola! Bookshelves!

Books may not change our suffering, books may not protect us from evil, books may not tell us what is good or what is beautiful, and they will certainly not shield us from the common fate of the grave. But books grant us myriad possibilities: the possibility of change, the possibility of illumination.

I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,An open book and empty cupOn the marble table-top.While on the shop and street I gazedMy body of a sudden blazed;And twenty minutes more or lessIt seemed, so great my happiness,That I was blessed and could bless.

Quiet people have the loudest minds.

It’s only with mild surprise I find I don’t so much read anymore, but rather teeter, wonder, take flight, like Pascal, like Madeline, like Bemelmans, like Lamorisse, like my daughters. Like Robert. Like anyone who has ever started or finished a book, or a love affair, or confused the two, in sweet anticipation of the fall.

Reading is probably another way of being in a place.

As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.