"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." - Francis Bacon, Essays

"Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body." - Bible, Ecclesiastes 12:12

"Master books, but do not let them master you. - Read to live, not live to read." - Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton

"In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern." - Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton

"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island.....and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day." - Walt Disney

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers." - Charles W. Eliot, The Durable Satisfactions of Life

"A man is known by the books he reads." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"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, Two Cheers for Democracy

"Never lend books, for no one ever returns them. The only books I have in my library are books that other folk have lent me." - Anatole France

"Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings." - Heinrich Heine, Almansor: A Tragedy

"I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me." - Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia

"A book is a mirror: when a monkey looks in, no apostle can look out." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms

"Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way around." - David Lodge, The British Museum is Falling Down

"The total absence of humour from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature." - Alfred North Whitehead

"Literature is news that STAYS news." - Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading

"Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life." - Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." - Mark Twain

"Classic: A book which people praise and don't read." - Mark Twain, Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

". . . a classic - something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read." - Mark Twain, speech (1900)

"I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil." - Voltaire

"The multitude of books is making us ignorant." - Voltaire

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas." - A. Whitney Griswold, speech (1952)

"The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, one sometimes forgets which." - JAMES M. BARRIE, Sentimental Tommy

"Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh." - BIBLE, Ecclesiastes 12:12

"There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry."
- EMILY DICKINSON, There is no Frigate like a Book

"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, The Durable Satisfactions of Life

"Never read any book that is not a year old." - RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Society and Solitude

"We find little in a book but what we put there. But in great books, the mind finds room to put many things." - JOSEPH JOUBERT, Pensées

"All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words."
- AMY LOWELL, Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds

"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading." - LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH, Afterthoughts

" . . . a classic - something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read." - MARK TWAIN, speech (1900)

"The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read." - OSCAR WILDE, Intentions, The Critic as Artist

"A room without books is as a body without a soul." - Lubbock, Sir John

"All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value." - Sagan, Carl (1934- )