Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them… I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon’s teeth and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.
John Milton
www.english-culture.com/literature-life A way to reach a lot of free e-books!
Books are not used to know but to think, and thinking means avoiding uncritical adhesion to open up to questions, it means questioning things beyond their usual meaning made stable by the laziness of habit; it is to prevent the texts from becoming sacred texts for blessed consciences which, renouncing the risk of questioning, confuse the sincerity of adherence with the depth of sleep.
Umberto Galimberti
We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.
Umberto Eco
The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
Samuel Johnson
Books without kind human readers are completely useless!
Carl William Brown
Books for general reading always smell badly; the odor of common people hangs about them. Friedrich Nietzsche
Real books are not the children of light and chatter, but of darkness and silence.
Marcel Proust
A philosopher or a man of letters can write a book, but only readers can make him speak and by giving him a voice, make people listen to him.
Carl William Brown
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Joseph Brodsky
Others boast of the words they wrote: my pride lies in what I read.
Jorge Luis Borges
Reading good books could help soothe human stupidity, the problem is that stupidity doesn't like to read.
Carl William Brown
Don’t just say that you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better.
Epictetus
Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.
Moliere
When we are alone and feeling low, a good book can listen to us and we can gather comfort, consolation and strength!
Carl William Brown
A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.
Henry Ward Beecher
Books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good; Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
William Wordsworth
Books are useless. A man needs someone... to be by his side.
John Ernst Steinbeck
No ornament of a house can compare with books; they are constant company in a room, even when you are not reading them.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Henry David Thoreau
The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.
René Descartes