23rd April is observed as World Book Day across the world. And few things in the world can compare to the joy of reading a book.
On this special day, we have compiled for you a list of quotes that describe the pleasures of book and of reading.
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”
― William Styron, Conversations with William Styron
“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
― Ernest Hemingway
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx
“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
“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.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“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
“Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.”
― George R. R. Martin
“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn’t carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”
― Stephen King
“Books may well be the only true magic.”
― Alice Hoffman
“That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
“Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.”
― Christopher Paolini, Eragon
“My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
― Cicero
“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
― Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts
“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
― Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life
“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.”
― Franz Kafka
“A house without books is like a room without windows.”
― Horace Mann
“When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.”
― Margaret Walker
“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.”
― Henry Miller, The Books in My Life
“A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.”
― Astrid Lindgren
“Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.”
― Guy de Maupassant
“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.”
― Louis L’Amour, Matagorda/The First Fast Draw
“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”
― Rene Descartes
“A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.”
― Caroline Gordon
“The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”
― Joseph Joubert
“My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”
― Malcolm X
“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 of your life.”
― Walt Disney
“A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.”
― Will Rogers
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”
― Joseph Addison
“I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.”
― Gary Paulsen, Shelf Life: Stories by the Book
“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You
“The books – the generous friends who met me without suspicion – the merciful masters who never used me ill!”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale
“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.”
― Ezra Pound
“I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.”
― George Gissing
“When I discovered libraries, it was like having Christmas every day.”
― Jean Fritz
“I guess there are never enough books.”
― John Steinbeck, A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia
“I love books. I like that the moment you open one and sink into it you can escape from the world, into a story that’s way more interesting that yours will ever be.”
― Elizabeth Scott, Bloom
What other quotes on books and reading have inspired you? Do let us know!
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