books

"Life is too short to waste time on books that end badly"

"...and Jo laid the rustling sheets together with a careful hand, as one might shut the covers of a lovely romance, which holds the reader fast till the end comes, and he finds himself alone in the work-a-day world again."

"We note our place with bookmarkersThat measure what we've lost."

"Weren’t all books ultimately related? After all, the same letters filled them, just arranged in a different order. Which meant that, in a certain way, every book was contained in every other!"

"The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones."

"If you cannot read all your books...fondle them---peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances."

"Books are precious things, but more than that, they are the strong backbone of civilization. They are the thread upon which it all hangs, and they can save us when all else is lost."

"Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures."

"Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness."

"It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home."

"Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic."

"Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading."

"Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told."

"In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro.(Everywhere I have sought peace and not found it, except in a corner with a book.)"

"It [the book] was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as a spider's web and enchantingly beautiful.."

"...I tell myself it does not matter what one reads--favorite authors, particular themes--as long as we read something. It is not even important to own the books."

"It's a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids."

"Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance."

"The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book."

"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."