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

Oscar Wilde
8,630

The ancient books are everything I want; their wisdom is the balm that soothes my pain.

Moses Ibn Ezra
7,521
I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage. -Charles De Secondat
5,639

Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.

William Shakespeare
5,209

Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.

Horace Mann
4,985
A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. -Horace Mann
4,963

When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

Michel de Montaigne
3,843

By burning Luther's books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men's minds of him.

Desiderius Erasmus
2,173
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. -Sir Francis Bacon
2,104

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

Sir Francis Bacon
2,063

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G. K. Chesterton
1,368
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read. -G. K. Chesterton
1,357

Books, the children of the brain.

Jonathan Swift
1,073

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

Christopher Morley
1,040
When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. -Christopher Morley
1,039

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

Jane Austen
414

I read part of it all the way through.

Samuel Goldwyn
410
A room without books is like a body without a soul. -Cicero
360

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Albert Einstein
358

Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?

Albert Einstein
358
There were epochs in the history of the humanity in which the writer was a sacred person. He wrote the sacred books, universal books, the codes, the epic, the oracles. Sentences inscribed on the walls of the crypts; examples in the portals of the temples. But in those times the writer was not an individual alone; he was the people. -Augusto Roa Bastos
344

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.

Carl Sandburg
341

If books were Persian carpets, one would not look only at the outer side. because it is the stitch that makes a carpet wear, gives it its life and bloom.

Rumer Godden
341
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. -Henry David Thoreau
335

Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.

Paxton Hood
314

Most new books are forgotten within a year, especially by those who borrow them.

Evan Esar
313
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return. -Salman Rushdie
310

Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.

Jeanette Winterson
292

Books open your mind, broaden your mind, and strengthen you as nothing else can.

William Feather
292
Reading this book is like waiting for the first shoe to drop. -Ralph Novak
286