Best Quotes about Books and Reading

Sleep is good, he said, and books are better

George R.R. Martin

So many books, so little time.

Frank Zappa

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.

Erasmus

Reading brings us unknown friends.

Honoré de Balzac

Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.

Charles W. Eliot

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.

Louisa May Alcott

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

Charles Baudelaire

Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.

Kate DiCamillo

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.

Walt Disney

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

Haruki Murakami

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.

Jane Smiley

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Mark Twain

I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.

Emma Thompson

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

 George Bernard Shaw

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

Neil Gaiman, Coraline

The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.

Isabel Allende

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

Stephen King

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

C.S. Lewis

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Oscar Wilde

A book is a gift you can open again and again.

Garrison Keillor

Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the books.

Dr. Seuss

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

Ernest Hemingway

That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.

Jhumpa Lahiri

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

Stephen King

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

Salman Rushdie

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

Oscar Wilde

Books are mirrors: You only see in them what you already have inside you.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.

Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

Umberto Eco

It is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

Donna Tartt, The Secret History

Books were my pass to personal freedom.

Oprah Winfrey

Some books leave us free, and some books make us free.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you’ll die of a misprint.

Markus Herz

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Ray Bradbury

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.

Francois Mauriac

Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

Sir Francis Bacon