A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.
Books Quotes
The newest books are those that never grow old.
Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book does not shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place?
The book has been man’s greatest triumph. Seated in my library, I live in a time machine. In an instant I can be transmitted to any era, any part of the world, even to outer space. I have lived in every period of history. I have listened to Buddha speak, marched with Alexander, sailed with […]
What a sense of superiority it gives one to escape reading some book which everyone else is reading.
Books are a narcotic.
For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid pieces of paper unfolds world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet you or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we […]
One would imagine that books were, like women, the worse for being old : that they open their leaves more cordially; that the spirit of enjoyment wears out with the spirit of novelty; and that after a certain age, it is high time to put them on the shelf.
Steal This Book. (book title)
They will no more share a book than a mistress with a friend. If they suspected their favorite volumes of delighting any eyes but their own, they would immediately discard them from the list. Theirs are superannuated beauties that every one else has left off intriguing with, bedridden hags, a ‘stud of nightmares.’