books

"Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good."

"He ate and drank the precious words,His spirit grew robust;He knew no more that he was poor,Nor that his frame was dust.He danced along the dingy days,And this bequest of wingsWas but a book. What libertyA loosened spirit brings!"

"Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves."

"But I think the most important thing those books gave me was a kind of faith. My books promised me that life wasn’t just made up of workaday tasks and prosaic things. The world is bigger and more colorful and more important than that."

"I love books, they're in my blood."

"It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language"

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."

"...I will not allow books to prove any thing.""But how shall we prove any thing?""We never shall."

"Adult librarians are like lazy bakers: their patrons want a jelly doughnut, so they give them a jelly doughnut. Children’s librarians are ambitious bakers: 'You like the jelly doughnut? I’ll get you a jelly doughnut. But you should try my cruller, too. My cruller is gonna blow your mind, kid."

"I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days."

"There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book."

"No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond."

"The Book of Life, I’m still writing it—both literally and literarily. So far I’ve written the Table of Contents. Right now it’s more of a coffee table."

"Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand."

"You've read half the books in this house? This whole house?""Well, approximately half."Sticky said. "To be more accurate, I suppose I've read more like"- his eyes went up as he calculated - "three sevenths? Yes, three sevenths.""Only three sevenths?"said Kate, pretending to look disappointed. "And here I was prepared to be impressed."

"If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book."

"What is the quality you most like in a man? The ability to return books."

"Not being the sort to throw a book, she pounded her fist on her cushion."

"The world was hers for the reading."

"Your mail could've waited."Daemon followed me into the kitchen. "What is it? Just books?"Grabbing the OJ from the fridge, I sighed. People who didn't heart books didn't understand."