Books 

1. Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.
   Amos Bronson Alcott 1799–1888 American reformer: Tablets (1868) ch. 6
2. Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
   W. H. Auden 1907–73 English poet: The Dyer's Hand (1963) ‘Reading’
3. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
   Francis Bacon 1561–1626 English lawyer, courtier, philosopher, and essayist: Essays (1625) ‘Of Studies’
4. Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't…Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own.
   Julian Barnes 1946–  English novelist: Flaubert's Parrot (1984)
5. Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
   
    
   The Bible (Authorized Version, 1611): Ecclesiastes ch. 12, v. 12
6. There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
   Joseph Brodsky 1940–96 Russian-born American poet: at a press conference at the Library of Congress, Washington, 17 May 1991 on his becoming poet laureate of the United States
7. The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.
   Anthony Burgess 1917–93 English novelist and critic: in New York Times Book Review 4 December 1966
8. ‘What is the use of a book’, thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?’
   Lewis Carroll 1832–98 English writer and logician: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) ch. 1
9. I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart.
   Stephen Colbert 1964–  American satirist: The Colbert Report 17 October 2005
10. There is no Frigate like a Book
    To take us Lands away
    Nor any Coursers like a Page
    Of prancing Poetry.
    
     
    Emily Dickinson 1830–86 American poet: ‘A Book (2)’ (1873)
11. There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island.
    Walt Disney 1901–66 American animator and film producer: attributed, Laurence J. Peter Quotations for Our Time (1977)
12. The good of a book lies in its being read.
    Umberto Eco 1932–2016 Italian novelist and semiotician: The Name of the Rose (1981)
13. When I buy a new book, I read the last page first. That way, in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends.
    Nora Ephron 1941–2012 American writer and journalist: When Harry Met Sally (1989 film) spoken by Billy Crystal as Harry Burns
14. Books are made not like children but like pyramids…and they're just as useless! and they stay in the desert!…Jackals piss at their foot and the bourgeois climb up on them.
    Gustave Flaubert 1821–80 French novelist: letter to Ernest Feydeau, November/December 1857
15. I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
    E. M. Forster 1879–1970 English novelist: Two Cheers for Democracy (1951) ‘Books That Influenced Me’
16. Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.
    E. M. Forster 1879–1970 English novelist: note from commonplace book; O. Stallybrass (ed.) Aspects of the Novel and Related Writings (1974)
17. One technology doesn’t replace another, it complements. Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.
    Stephen Fry 1957–  English comedian, actor, and writer: tweet, 11 March 2009
18. A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
    Aldous Huxley 1894–1963 English novelist: Point Counter Point (1928)
19. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
    Franz Kafka 1883–1924 Czech novelist: letter, 27 January 1904
20. It is one of the great charms of books that they have to end.
    Frank Kermode 1919–2010 British literary critic: The Sense of an Ending (1967)
21. Your borrowers of books—those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
    Charles Lamb 1775–1834 English writer: Essays of Elia (1823) ‘The Two Races of Men’
22. In an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.
    Harper Lee 1926–2016 American novelist: in O, The Oprah Magazine July 2006
23. All books are either dreams or swords,
    You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
    
     
    Amy Lowell 1874–1925 American poet: ‘Sword Blades and Poppy Seed’ (1914); see Farquhar
24. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
    Herman Melville 1819–91 American novelist and poet: Moby Dick (1851) ch. 104
25. A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
    John Milton 1608–74 English poet: Areopagitica (1644)
26. If there is a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
    Toni Morrison 1931–  American novelist: attributed; Morrison told the editors of the Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations (2008) that she remembers only that she said it in a speech
27. This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
    Dorothy Parker 1893–1967 American critic and humorist: R. E. Drennan Wit's End (1973)
28. [Pliny] always said that there was no book so bad that some good could not be got out of it.
    Pliny the Elder ad 23–79 Roman statesman and scholar: Pliny the Younger Letters bk. 3, no. 5
29. The principle of procrastinated rape is said to be the ruling one in all the great best-sellers.
    V. S. Pritchett 1900–97 English writer and critic: The Living Novel (1946) ‘Clarissa’
30. Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory…In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man's freedom.
    Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882–1945 American Democratic statesman, 32nd President 1933–45: ‘Message to the Booksellers of America’ 6 May 1942, in Publisher's Weekly 9 May 1942
31. All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.
    John Ruskin 1819–1900 English art and social critic: Sesame and Lilies (1865) ‘Of Kings' Treasuries’
32. A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent.
    Logan Pearsall Smith 1865–1946 American-born man of letters: Afterthoughts (1931) ‘Art and Letters’
33. No furniture so charming as books.
    Sydney Smith 1771–1845 English clergyman and essayist: Lady Holland Memoir (1855) vol. 1, ch. 9; see Powell
34. I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
    Robert Louis Stevenson 1850–94 Scottish novelist: Memories and Portraits (1887)
35. Books that told me everything about the wasp, except why.
    Dylan Thomas 1914–53 Welsh poet: A Child's Christmas in Wales (1954)
36. A good book is the best of friends, the same to-day and for ever.
    Martin Tupper 1810–89 English writer: Proverbial Philosophy Series I (1838) ‘Of Reading’
37. ‘Classic’. A book which people praise and don't read.
    Mark Twain 1835–1910 American writer: Following the Equator (1897) ch. 25
38. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
    Oscar Wilde 1854–1900 Irish dramatist and poet: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) preface