50+ Profound Quotes About Books and the Love of Reading

“And that’s why books are never going to die. It’s impossible. It’s the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book doesn’t only belong to the writer, it belongs to the reader as well, and then together you make it what it is.”

“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.”

“How is it that, a full two centuries after Jane Austen finished her manuscript, we come to the world of Pride and Prejudice and find ourselves transcending customs, strictures, time, mores, to arrive at a place that educates, amuses, and enthralls us? It is a miracle. We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else’s mind.”

“She closed the book and put her cheek against it. There was still an odor of a library on it, of dust, leather, binding glue, and old paper, one book carrying the smell of hundreds.”

“With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.”

“…only then did I wake out of the book.”

“If you love books enough, books will love you back.”

“The problem with books is that they end.”

“I’m pretty sure my addiction to reading has just reached a whole new level.”

“You are a total stranger and you want to take my library book.”

“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. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.”

“Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.”

“What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.”

“There is something wonderful about a book. We can pick it up. We can heft it. We can read it. We can set it down. We can think of what we have read. It does something for us. We can share great minds, great actions, and great undertakings in the pages of a book.”

“A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”

“Reading is not an end to itself, but a means to an end.”

“All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.”

“Libraries raised me.”

“The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.”

“A word to the unwise.Torch every book.Char every page.Burn every word to ash.Ideas are incombustible.And therein lies your real fear.”

“I love everything that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.”

“I can imagine no greater bliss than to lie about, reading novels all day.”

“She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.”

“I leapt eagerly into books. The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own.”

“A good book … leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.”

“Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”

“Books – the best antidote against the marsh-gas of boredom and vacuity”

“She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness.”

“The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.”

“If I could convert books to wine, I’d start with The Grapes of Wrath. I’ve never read it, but maybe tonight I’ll be thirsty enough.”

“I keep my motivational book collection in the fridge. Hey, Who Moved My Cheese?! Did somebody let grandpa out of his cage again?”

“Her heart is so dark, if it were ink it’d be beyond black and would only be good for writing a murder mystery novel.”

“Never trust a man who reads only one book.”

“Books must be treated with respect, we feel that in our bones, because words have power. Bring enough words together they can bend space and time.”

“Books, the children of the brain.”

“What an author doesn’t know could fill a book.”

“Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.”

“Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.”

“I thought… that we could at least talk about books.”

“Don’t let mental blocks control you. Set yourself free. Confront your fear and turn the mental blocks into building blocks.”

“Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.”

“I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.”

“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”

“When you sell a man a book you don’t sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue – you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night – there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.”

“Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read.”

“You have to remember that it is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book.”

“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.”

“Nobody steals books but your friends.”

“That’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything.”

“I have lived a thousand lives and I’ve loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read.”