Books Quotes

“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“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

“Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.”
― George R. R. Martin

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”
― Stephen King

“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”
― Sir Francis Bacon

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
― St. Augustine

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

“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?”
― Henry Ward Beecherr

“I cannot live without books.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.”
― Fran Lebowitz, The Fran Lebowitz Reader

“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books.”
― Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

“Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.”
― Stephen King

“Books may well be the only true magic.”
― Alice Hoffman

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes”
― Daniel Pennac

“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”
― Jane Smiley, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.”
― Christopher Paolini, Eragon

“Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.”
― J.K. Rowling

“Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head.”
― Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
― Cicero