Becky > Becky's Quotes

“The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
― Robert Frost

“As adults we choose our own reading material. Depending on our moods and needs we might read the newspaper, a blockbuster novel, an academic article, a women's magazine, a comic, a children's book, or the latest book that just about everyone is reading. No one chastises us for our choice. No one says, 'That's too short for you to read.' No one says, 'That's too easy for you, put it back.' No one says 'You couldn't read that if you tried -- it's much too difficult.'

Yet if we take a peek into classrooms, libraries, and bookshops we will notice that children's choices are often mocked, censured, and denied as valid by idiotic, interfering teachers, librarians, and parents. Choice is a personal matter that changes with experience, changes with mood, and changes with need. We should let it be.”
― Mem Fox, Radical Reflections: Passionate Opinions on Teaching, Learning, and Living

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“A great library doesn't have to be big or beautiful. It doesn't have to have the best facilities or the most efficient staff or the most users. A great library provides. It is enmeshed in the life of a community in a way that makes it indispensable. A great library is one nobody notices because it is always there, and always has what people need.”
― Vicki Myron, Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World

“Libraries really are wonderful. They're better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“I have always had a special affinity for libraries and librarians, for the most obvious reasons. I love books. (One of my first Jobs was shelving books at a branch of the Chicago Public Library.) Libraries are a pillar of any society. I believe our lack of attention to funding and caring for them properly in the United States has a direct bearing on problems of literacy, productivity, and our inability to compete in today's world. Libraries are everyman's free university.”
― John Jakes, Homeland

“A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.”
― Andrew Carnegie

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
― Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life

“Nah. I'm a tough cookie. Except for the cancer, I'm fine.”
― Lisa Scottoline, Every Fifteen Minutes

“Reading is a gift, but only if the words are taken into the soul--eaten, chewed, gnawed, received in unhurried delight.”
― Eugene H. Peterson

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel