As a book lover, I love all things book related. And that includes quotes about books and reading. Therefore, I compiled a list of 182 quotes about books. I hope you enjoy the book quotes I share below, if you don’t see your favorite listed, please share it in the comments below!
Quotes about Books and Reading
1.) “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” ~ Dr. Seuss, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!
2.) “It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” ~ Oscar Wilde
3.) “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” ~ C.S. Lewis
4.) “Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.” ~ Voltaire
5.) “Sleep is good, he said, And books are better.” ~ George R.R. Martin
6.) “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” ~ Margaret Fuller
7.) “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” ~ Joseph Addison
8.) “Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
9.) “I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.” ~ Margaret Atwood
10.) “No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.” ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning
11.) “Reading… a vacation for the mind….” ~ Dave Barry
12.) “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” ~ Oscar Wilde
13.) “You can travel the world and never leave your chair when you read a book.” ~ Sherry K. Plummer
14.) “I read my eyes out and can’t read half enough…the more one reads the more one sees we have to read.”~ John Adams
15.) “Books, I found, had the power to make time stand still, retreat or fly into the future.” ~ Jim Bishop
16.) “Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life.’” ~ Helen Exley
17.) “Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.” ~ Holbrook Jackson
18.) “No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.” ~ Ezra Pound
19.) “Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.” ~Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
20.) “No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.” ~ Mary Wortley Montagu
21.) “Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.” ~ John Adams
22.) “Reading gives one something to think about other than one’s self.” ~ Tom Bissell
23.) “Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.” ~ Louis L’Amour
24.) “The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.” ~ Thomas Wolfe
25.) “A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself.” ~Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
26.) “Read to escape reality . . . Write to embrace it.” ~ Stephanie Connolly
27.) “Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” ~ Elizabeth Hardwick
28.) “I did realize, as do you, how blessed I was to know bookjoy, the private pleasure of savoring text.”~ Pat Mora
29.) “Reading is dreaming with open eyes” ~ YoYo
30.) “When I get hold of a book I particularly admire, I am so enthusiastic that I loan it to someone who never brings it back.” ~ Edgar Watson Howe
31.) “A good reading strengthens the soul.” ~ Toba Beta
32.) “Books are absent teachers.” ~ Mortimer J. Adler
33.) “The best book is not one that informs merely, but one that stirs the reader up to inform himself.” ~ A.W. Tozer, Man The Dwelling Place Of God
34.) “Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.” ~ Jeanette Winterson
35.) “Every book is judged by its cover until it is read.” Agatha Swanburne (penned by Maryrose Wood)
36.) “There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.” ~ Isaac D’Israeli
37.) “Reading makes me feel like I’ve lived a thousand lives in addition to my own.” ~ Arlaina Tibensky
38.)“You can’t enjoy art or books in a hurry.” ~ E.A. Bucchianeri
39.) “Reading a great work of literature can truly be likened to having a conversation with a great mind.” ~ Jennie Chancey
40.) “There’s no book that absolutely everyone loves.” ~ Carolyn Parkhurst
41.) “Books are like friends to me. Words come alive on the page.” ~ Beverly Lewis
42.) “Owning a book is a third of the goal. The others are actually reading it and applying it.” ~ Israel Wayne
43.) “Books are best preserved in the minds of readers.” ~ Kat Lowe, Dream Cat
44.) “Man is what he reads.” ~ Joseph Brodsky
45.) “Never judge a book by its movie.” ~ J.W. Eagan
46.) “There is much to discover that’s not on the back cover!” ~ E.A. Bucchianeri
47.) “Reading is important. If you know how to read then the whole world opens up to you” ~ President Barak Obama
48.) “Nothing can compare to the feeling evoked by turning the page in a great book.” ~ Aneta Cruz
49.) “Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again.” ~ Louisa May Alcott
50.) “When I’m reading, wherever I am, I’m always somewhere else.” ~ Rebecca Wells, Little Altars Everywhere
51.) “Even in the most stressed times there is always time for reading.” ~ Emilie and Stephanie
52.) “Read to lead in order to succeed.” ~ Habeeb Akande
53.) “I need to experience books, not just read them.” ~ Lauren Morrill, Meant to Be
54.) “I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I’d written.” ~ Barbara Kingsolver
55.) “Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading!” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
56.) “There is no such thing as a bad book, I just like some books more than others…” ~ Chris Geiger
57.) “If you cannot judge a book by its cover, surely we should not judge an author by one book alone?” ~ E.A. Bucchianeri
58.) “Reading feeds the soul, writing nourishes it!” ~ J.C. McClean
59.) “Everyone should read, we say, but we act as if only those with special talent should write.” ~ Roy Peter Clark
60.) “Reading is food for the brain.” ~ Maribel C. Pagan
61.) “Who needs to go somewhere when you can read about it.” ~ Pseudonymous Bosch
62.) “When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.” ~ Julian Barnes
63.) “Boredom is why God invented books.” ~ Julie Schumacher
64.) “It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” ~ Oscar Wilde
65.) “Be awesome! Be a book nut!” ~ Dr. Seuss
66.) “Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.” ~ Louisa May Alcott
67.) “In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar.” ~ Anne Fadiman
68.) “A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.”~ Will Rogers
69.) “I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.” ~ Charles de Montesquieu
70.) “The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.” ~ Rene Descartes
71.) “Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” ~ John Locke
72.) “A book worth reading is worth buying.” ~ John Ruskin
73.) “Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
74.) “The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading.” ~ David Bailey
75.) “Learn as much by writing as by reading.” ~ Lord Acton
76.) “If a book is well-written I always find it too short” ~ Jane Austen
77.) “He that loves reading has everything within his reach.” ~ William Godwin
78.) “There comes a time when you have to choose between turning the page and closing the book.” ~ Josh Jameson
79.) “I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.” ~ Harold Kushner
80.) “A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it or offer your own version in return.” ~ Salman Rushdie
81.) “Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
82.) “I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.” ~ C.S. Lewis
83.) “Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.” ~ Mark Twain
84.) “There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.” ~ Jacqueline Kennedy
85.) “A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.” ~ Franz Kafka
86.) “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” ~ Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
87.) “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” ~ Walt Disney
88.) “A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
89.) “It is better to read a little and ponder a lot than to read a lot and ponder a little.” ~ Denis Parsons Burkitt
90.) “Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.” ~ Edmund Burke
91.) “Reading will give you lasting pleasure.” ~ Former First Lady, Laura Bush
92.) “I was born with a reading list I will never finish.” ~ Maud Casey
93.) “There is no substitute for books in the life of a child.” ~ Mary Ellen Chase
94.) “Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.” ~ Mortimer Adler
95.) “I cannot live without books.”~ Thomas Jefferson
96.) “A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.” ~ Chinese Proverb
97.) “Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.” ~ Mortimer J. Adler
98.) “Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book.” ~ Charles Kingsley
99.) “Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.” ~ Virginia Woolf
100.) “When I discovered libraries, it was like having Christmas every day.” ~ Jean Fritz
101.) “When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began.” ~ Rita Mae Brown
102.) “Words are the voice of the heart.” ~ Confucius
103.) “The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most.” ~ Theodore Parker
104.) “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
105.) “Wear the old coat and buy the new book.” ~ Austin Phelps
106.) “Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.” ~ James Russell Lowell
107.) “Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.” ~ E.P. Whipple
108.) “What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” ~ Samuel Johnson
109.) “For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.” ~ Eudora Welty
110.) “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” ~ Stephen King
111.) “That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.” ~ Amos Bronson Alcott
112.) “A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.” ~ W. H.Auden
113.) “Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use.” ~ Professor Blackie
114.) “Begin to read a book that will help you move toward your dream.” ~ Les Brown
115.) “A good title is the title of a successful book.” ~ Raymond Chandler
116.) “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” ~ Marcus T. Cicero
117.) “There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.” ~ Isaac Disraeli
118.) “A book that is shut is but a block.” ~ Thomas Fuller
119.) “Old books, you know well, are books of the world’s youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
120.) “The newest books are those that never grow old.” ~ Logan Pearsall Smith
121.) “What is reading, but silent conversation.” ~ Walter Savage Landor
122.) “All books are either dreams or swords.” ~ Amy Lowell
123.) “Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” ~ John Locke
124.) “The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.” ~ James Mccosh
125.) “No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.” ~ Ezra Pound
126.) “Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.” ~ Unknown
127.) “The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” ~ Augustine
128.) “My perfect reader doesn’t just read – he or she devours books.” ~Anthony Horowitz
129.) “You learn to write by reading, and my experiences and tastes as a reader are pretty wide.” ~ Justin Cronin
130.) “From the reader’s view, a poem is more demanding than prose.” ~ Mark Strand
131.) “You’re a reader as well as a writer, so write what you’d want to read.” ~ Cassandra Clare
132.) “We love books because they are the greatest escape. That is because our own minds eye is the purest form of virtual reality.” ~ M.R. Mathias
133.) “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” ~ Robert Frost
134.) “One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.” ~ Amos Bronson Alcott
135.) “Tis the good reader that makes the good book.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
136.) “After three days without reading, talk becomes flavorless.” ~ Chinese proverb
137.) “A classic is a book which people praise and don’t read.” ~Mark Twain
138.) “Do not read good books–life is too short for that–read only the best.” ~ Ernest Dimnet
139.) “The first lesson reading teaches is how to be alone.” ~ Jonathan Franzen
140.) “If you believe everything you read, you better not read.” ~ Japanese proverb
141.) “Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.” ~ John Adams
142.) “The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.” ~ Nikki Giovanni
143.) “To read well is to prepare oneself to live wisely, kindly and wittily.” ~ Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
144.) “We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.” ~ Marcus Fabius Quintilian
145.) “While thought exists, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.” ~ Cyril Connolly
146.) “Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow…” ~ Lawrence Clark Powell
147.) “If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
148.) “Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.” ~ Edward Gibbon
149.) “You’re the same today as you’ll be in five years except for the people you meet and the books you read.” ~ Charlie “Tremendous” Jones
150.) “A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher
151.) “A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher
152.) “Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher
153.) “As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other, you will find what is needful for you in a book.” ~ George Macdonald
154.) “Talking over the things which you have read with your companions fixes them on the mind.” ~ Isaac Watts
155.) “I don’t think of literature as an end in itself. It’s just a way of communicating something.” ~ Isabel Allende
156.) “A real book is not one that’s read, but one that reads us.” ~ W.H. Auden
157.) “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
158.) “Books are islands in the ocean of time. They are also oases in the deserts of time.” ~ Lawrence Clark Powell
159.) “Reading books removes sorrows from the heart.” ~ Moroccan proverb
160.) “Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.” ~ Christopher Morley
161.) “When you read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than was there before.” ~ Clifton Fadiman
162.) “A novel is a conversation between a reader and a writer.” ~ John Green
163.) “Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.” ~ Joseph Addison
164.) “Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.” ~ Diane Duane
165.) “The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours” ~ Alan Bennett
166.) “I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself. Movies show you the pink house. A good book tells you there’s a pink house and lets you paint some of the finishing touches, maybe choose the roof style,park your own car out front. My imagination has always topped anything a movie could come up with…..” ~ Karen Marie Moning
167.) “When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.” ~ John Berger
168.) “Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.” ~ Arnold Lobel
169.) “Finishing a good book is like leaving a good friend.” ~ William Feather
170.) “For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.” ~ Anne Lamott
171.) “There’s nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you’ve read only once can’t.” ~ Gail Carson Levine
172.) “Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don’t you agree?” ~ Christopher Paolini
173.) “We’re all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away–our stories. I guess that’s what I love about books–they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time, that make us feel less alone or even more comfortable with our aloneness, if need be.” ~ Libba Bray
174.) “Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.” ~ Angela Carter
175.) “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.” ~ C.S. Lewis
176.) “It is both relaxing and invigorating to occasionally set aside the worries of life, seek the company of a friendly book…from the reading of ‘good books’ there comes a richness of life that can be obtained in no other way.” ~ Gordon B. Hinckley 
177.) “There is something wonderful about a book. We can pick it up. We can heft it. We can read it. We can set it down. We can think of what we have read. It does something for us. We can share great minds, great actions, and great undertakings in the pages of a book.” ~ Gordon B. Hinckley
178.) “It was a joy! Words weren’t dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.” ~ Charles Bukowski
179.) “Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.” ~ Marcel Proust
180.) “I think reading is a gift. It was a gift that was given to me as a child by many people, and now as an adult and a writer, I’m trying to give a little of it back to others. It’s one of the greatest pleasures I know.” ~ Ann M. Martin
181.) “Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.” ~ Joseph Joubert
182.) “Usually, when people get to the end of a chapter, they close the book and go to sleep. I deliberately write a book so when the reader gets to the end of the chapter, he or she must turn one more page.” ~ Sidney Sheldon
Which quote stuck out to you the most?
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