By The Book Quotes

So many books, so little time.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.

If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.

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.

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.

Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.

Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you'll die of a misprint.

A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.

The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books.

Life is a book and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read.

When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.

Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

Here’s to books, the cheapest vacation you can buy.

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.

You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

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.

Think before you speak. Read before you think.

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.

I cannot live without books.

I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.

Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.

He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books.

Books may well be the only true magic.

When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.

But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.

Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it; Who has left the world better than he found it, Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; Whose life was an inspiration; Whose memory a benediction.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?

There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.

Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

It kills me sometimes, how people die.

I am haunted by humans.

What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.

If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!

We live for books.

Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head.

Reader's Bill of Rights 1. The right to not read 2. The right to skip pages 3. The right to not finish 4. The right to reread 5. The right to read anything 6. The right to escapism 7. The right to read anywhere 8. The right to browse 9. The right to read out loud 10. The right to not defend your tastes

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.

We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

May I see you again?" he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice. I smiled. "Sure." "Tomorrow?" he asked. "Patience, grasshopper," I counseled. "You don't want to seem overeager. "Right, that's why I said tomorrow," he said. "I want to see you again tonight. But I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow." I rolled my eyes. "I'm serious," he said. "You don't even know me," I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. "How about I call you when I finish this?" "But you don't even have my phone number," he said. "I strongly suspect you wrote it in this book." He broke out into that goofy smile. "And you say we don't know each other.

THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. We are here to help you. 2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings. 3. The dress code will be enforced. 4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds. 5. Our football team will win the championship this year. 6. We expect more of you here. 7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen. 8. Your schedule was created with you in mind. 9. Your locker combination is private. 10. These will be the years you look back on fondly. TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. You will use algebra in your adult lives. 2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away. 3. Students must stay on campus during lunch. 4. The new text books will arrive any day now. 5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores. 6. We are enforcing the dress code. 7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon. 8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals. 9. There is nothing wrong with summer school. 10. We want to hear what you have to say.

You should date a girl who reads. Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn. She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow. Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. Or better yet, date a girl who writes.