Books Quotes

Whenever you read a good book, it’s like the author is right there, in the room talking to you, which is why I don’t like to read good books.

It’s enough for you to do it once for a few men to remember you. But if you do it year after year, then many people remember you and they tell it to their children, and their children and grandchildren remember and, if it concerns books, they can read them. And if it’s good enough, […]

It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.

Half of your book is to an index grown; You give your book contents, your reader none.

Another damned, thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr Gibbon?

A bad book is as much labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.

Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.

No gentleman can comfortably do without three copies of a book. One he must have for his show copy, and he will probably keep it in his country house. Another he will require for his own use and reference; and unless he is inclined to part with this, which is very inconvenient, or risk the […]

The readers and the hearers like my books, But yet some writers cannot them digest; But what care I? For when I make a feast I would my guests should praise it, not the cooks.

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice and just as the touch on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the voice […]