Favorite Literary Quotes About Books, Libraries, Literature, Stories, Writing, Reading & Thinking

Fairy tales are more than true.
Not because they tell us that dragons exist,
but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
~ G. K. Chesterton

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left over I buy food and clothes.
~ Erasmus

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

There are no evil thoughts – except one – the refusal to think.
~ Ayn Rand

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
~ Jorge Luis Borges

The World is Made Up of Stories, Not Atoms.
~ Muriel Rukeyser

You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.
~ C.S. Lewis

Read in order to live.
~ Gustave Flaubert, 1857

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
~ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey

There is no friend as loyal as a book.
~ Ernest Hemingway

Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud.
~ Theodore Sturgeon

When I'm near the end of a book, I need to sleep in the same room with it.
~ Joan Didion

Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that
brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.
~ Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, p. 10

Reading keeps you from going gaga.
~ Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, p.32

Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.
~ Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, p. 53

My library was dukedom large enough.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester, at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson, and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire 40 miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Roosevelt's eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina. I often think of that when I hear people say that they haven't time to read.
~ David McCullough

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.
~ Winston Churchill

The following quotes have been added to this list by our fellow bibliophiles... thank you!!!

Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.
~ Mason Cooley

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

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
~ Somerset Maugham

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
~Mary Wortley Montagu

The more you read, the more things you will know.
The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.
~ Dr. Seuss

So many books, so little time!
~ Frank Zappa

Book him, Danno!
~ Hawai'i Five Oh

Reading is FUNdamental
~ Unknown

Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot.
~ Sherlock Holmes

The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television.
~ Andrew Ross

Books are cold, but sure friends.
~ Victor Hugo

Manuscripts don't burn.
~ Mikhail Bulgakov

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Logan Pearsall

I find TV to be very educating. Everytime someone turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.
~Groucho Marx

To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor's prohibited list.
~ John Aikin

Medicine of the soul.
~ Inscription over the door at the Library of Thebes

Books are embalmed minds.
~ Bovee

Reading without reflection is like eating without digestion.
~ Edmund Burke

Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.
~ John LeCarre

Never judge a book by its movie.
~ J W Eagen

He who lends a book is an idiot, he who returns the book is more of an idiot.
~Arabic proverb

A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
Chinese proverb ~

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island.
~ Walt Disney

Books-the children of the brain.
~ Jonathan Swift