4,370 Quotes About Literature

I regained my soul through literature after those times I'd lost it to wild-eyed gypsy girls on the European streets.

Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic. As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head.

What a blessing it is to love books. Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden.

By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This is to me is a miracle.

A precious, mouldering pleasure ’t is To meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think.

A book is the cheapest ticket you will ever hold.

We human beings build houses because we're alive but we write books because we're mortal. We live in groups because we're sociable but we read because we know we're alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one's place but that no one can replace either. It offers no definitive explanation of our destiny but links us inextricably to life. Its tiny secret links remind us of how paradoxically happy we are to be alive while illuminating how tragically absurd life is.

Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, by which my existence is justified; find that line, and immortality is assured.