He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born.
If men were to be destroyed and the books they have written were to be transmitted to a new race of creatures, in a new world, what kind of record would be found in them of so remarkable a phenomenon as the rainbow?
The Library is a wilderness of books.
There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject; as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the first.
A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land.
After all, I believe it is the style of thought entirely, and the style of expression, which makes the difference in books.
Reading musses up my mind.
We do not talk – we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.
We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.
A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum.
All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet – if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.
Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.
All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet.
Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings – as some savage tribes determine the power of muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser.
Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings.
There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it.
A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.
I read for three things; first, to know what the world has done the last twenty-four hours, and is about to do today; second, for the knowledge that I specially want in my work; and third, for what will bring my mind into a proper mood.
Books are not men and yet they stay alive.
There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs.