60 Quotes About Books

It is not the number of books you read, nor the variety of sermons you hear, nor the amount of religious conversation in which you mix, but it is the frequency and earnestness with which you meditate on these things till the truth in them becomes your own and part of your being, that ensures your growth.

Next to the Bible, the book that I value most is John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. I believe I have read it through at least a hundred times. It is a volume of which I never seem to tire.

Many a preacher misses the mark because, though he knows books, he does not know men.

Show me a man's books and show me a man's companions--and I will tell you what sort of a man he is.

It is well to remember that reading books about the Bible is a very different thing to searching the Word for oneself.

If all the crowns of Europe were placed at my disposal on condition that I should abandon my books and studies, I should spurn the crowns away and stand by the books.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.

What a world of wit is here packed together! I know not whether the sight doth more dismay or comfort me. It dismays me to think that here is so much I cannot know; it comforts me to think that this variety yields so good helps to know what I should. Blessed be the memory of those who have left their blood, their spirits, their lives, in these precious books, and have willingly wasted themselves into these during monuments, to give light unto others.

You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.

Do not be influenced by the importance of the writer, and whether his learning be great or small, but let the love of pure truth draw you to read. Do not inquire, Who said this? but pay attention to what is said.

If thou desire to profit, read with humility, simplicity, and faithfulness; nor even desire the repute of learning.

They are not the best students who are most dependent on books. What can be got out of them is at best only material; a man must build his house for himself.

A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.

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

If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

I read hard, or not at all; never skimming, and never turning aside to merely inviting books; and Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Jonathan Edwards, have passed, like the iron atoms of the blood, into my mental constitution.

As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other, you will find what is needful for you in a book.

Talking over the things which you have read with your companions fixes them on the mind.

Beware of the person of one book.

Multifarious reading weakens the mind more than doing nothing, for it becomes a necessity, at last, like smoking: and is an excuse for the mind to lie dormant whilst thought is poured in, and runs through, a clear stream over unproductive gravel, on which not even mosses grow. It is the idlest of all idleness, and leaves more of impotency than any other.

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that aliment, whose property is to feed it.

An index is a necessary implement, without which a large author is but a labyrinth without a clue to direct the readers within.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

The advertisements in a newspaper are more full knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are.

Amidst the flood of dangerous reading, I plead for my Master's book; I call upon you not to forget the book of the soul. Do not let newspapers, novels, and romances be read, while the prophets and Apostles be despised. Do not let the exciting and sensual swallow up your attention, while the edifying and the sanctifying can find no place in your mind.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books.

How different is the poet from the mystic. The former uses symbols, knowing they are symbols; the latter mistakes them for realities.

Books on psychology or economics or politics are as continuously metaphorical as books of poetry or devotion.

If the riches of the Indies, or the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe, were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading, I would spurn them all.

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.

As a man may be eating all day, and for want of digestion is never nourished, so these endless readers may cram themselves in vain with intellectual food.

There are some so-called Christian homes today with books on the shelves of the library that have no more business there than a rattler crawling about on the floor, or a poison within the child's reach.

Everywhere I have sought rest and found it not except sitting apart in a nook with a little book.

Many works of fiction may be read with safety; some even with profit; but the constant familiarity, even with such as are not exceptionable in themselves, relaxes the mind, which needs hardening; dissolves the heart, which wants fortifying; stirs the imagination, which wants quieting; irritates the passions, which want calming; and, above all, disinclines and disqualifies for active virtues and for spiritual exercises.

Beware you are not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.