There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book.
A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.
As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Viola! Bookshelves!
In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.
Books may not change our suffering, books may not protect us from evil, books may not tell us what is good or what is beautiful, and they will certainly not shield us from the common fate of the grave. But books grant us myriad possibilities: the possibility of change, the possibility of illumination.
The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency -- the belief that the here and now is all there is.
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.
Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you.
Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other menโs brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. You need to read. . . . We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure time, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Masterโs service. Paul cries, โBring the booksโ โ join in the cry.
Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel.
When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.
ุงููุฑุงุกุฉ ุงูู ุจุงูุบ ูููุง ูุง ุชุฌุนู ู ูุง ุฃุฐููุงุก. ุจุนุถ ุงููุงุณ ูุจุชูุนูู ุงููุชุจ, ููู ููุนููู ุฐูู ุจุฏูู ูุงุตู ููุชูููุฑ ุงูุถุฑูุฑู. ููู ุถุฑูุฑู ููู ููุถู ุงูู ูุฑูุก ููุจูู ููุชุจูู ูููููู
Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read and what I haven't read.
Reading is not an end to itself, but a means to an end.
Books... are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.
There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street. There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women. There are phrases from literary works that have a positively human personality. There are passages from my own writing that chill me with fright, so distinctly do I feel them as people, so sharply outlined do they appear against the walls of my room, at night, in shadows... I've written sentences whose sound, read out loud or silently (impossible to hide their sound), can only be of something that acquired absolute exteriority and a full-fledged soul.
My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, โIf I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read โฆโ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out โwhat happens nextโ โฆ the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plotโs been learned.
I know there are people who don't read fiction at all, and I find it hard to understand how they can bear to be inside the same head all the time.
