The true university of these days is a collection of books.
The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.
A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
In books lies the soul fo the whole past time.
No good book or good thing of any kind shows it best face at first. No the most common quality of in a true work of art that has excellence and depth, is that at first sight it produces a certain disappointment.
After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books.
In the poorest cottage are Books: is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is Deepest in him.
I call the book of Job, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with the pen.
A man ought to inquire and find out what he really and truly has an appetite for; what suits his constitution; and that, doctors tell him, is the very thing he ought to have in general. And so with books.
O thou who art able to write a book which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner.
A noble book! all men’s book!
If a book comes from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and author-craft are of small amount to that.
All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.
If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.
May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books.
Happy the people whose annals are blank in the history books!
Books are a triviality. Life alone is great.
No good book, or good thing of any sort, shows its best face at first.
Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.
A collection of books is the best of all universities.