Books are the best! You can quote us on that. In fact, we’ve got 100+ more of the best book quotes that we love. These quotes will inspire you to discover the love of reading all over again, opening up the covers to flip through the pages.
The love of reading starts from a young age. It starts off with books as simple as picture books and grows as you progress towards more complex books. Book are friends who can be companions for a lifetime. Be inspired by these, some of our favourite quotes about books, below.
Book Quotes for the Bookworm
“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde
“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw
“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, Keeping a Rendezvous
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
― St. Augustine
“Why can’t people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?”
― David Baldacci, The Camel Club
“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
“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.”
― Stephen King
“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline
“Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.”
― Thomas Jefferson
“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”
― Sir Francis Bacon
“People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.”
― Malcolm X
“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.”
― Anne Herbert
“I guess there are never enough books.”
― John Steinbeck, A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia
“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
― Bertrand Russell
“There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.”
― Shannon L. Alder
“The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Bell at Sealey Head
“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Books: Windows to New Worlds
Books are great for a rainy day, a sunny day or any day at all. They allow us to escape into a world of fantasy or tap into the minds of others. It is no wonder that there so many wonderful quotes about books and the joy which they bring.
“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.”
― Ezra Pound
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx
“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?”
― Henry Ward Beecherr
“A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.”
― Charles Baudelaire
“I love books. I like that the moment you open one and sink into it you can escape from the world, into a story that’s way more interesting that yours will ever be.”
― Elizabeth Scott, Bloom
“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
“You cannot open a book without learning something.”
― Confucius
“A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.”
― Robertson Davies
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.”
― Franz Kafka
“The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert
“No two persons ever read the same book.”
― Edmund Wilson
“Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.”
― George R. R. Martin
“This book taught me, once and for all, how easily you can escape this world with the help of words! You can find friends between the pages of a book, wonderful friends.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkspell
“You’re never alone when you’re reading a book.”
― Susan Wiggs
“I have lived a thousand lives and I’ve loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read.”
― George R.R. Martin
“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.”
― Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life
“Of all things, I liked books best.”
― Nikola Tesla
“A book is a gift you can open again and again.”
― Garrison Keillor
“Reading is my favourite occupation, when I have leisure for it and books to read.”
― Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
“Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“I cannot live without books.”
― Thomas Jefferson
“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.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa
“Books may well be the only true magic.”
― Alice Hoffman
“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.”
― C.S. Lewis
“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.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”
― Jane Smiley, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot
“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
“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.”
― Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
― Joseph Brodsky
“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.”
― C.S. Lewis
“The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.”
― George Orwell, 1984
“The world was hers for the reading.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.”
― Franz Kafka
“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
― Ernest Hemingway
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison
“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
“Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you’ll die of a misprint.”
― Markus Herz
“There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.”
― Christopher Morley, Pipefuls
“′Classic′ – a book which people praise and don’t read.”
― Mark Twain
“It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.”
― C.S. Lewis
“That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
“One can never have enough socks,” said Dumbledore. “Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn’t get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
“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.”
― Madeleine L’Engle
“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”
― Francois Mauriac
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
― Cicero
“… a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means…”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.”
― Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard
“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”
― Madeleine L’Engle
“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
“We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.”
― Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”
― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle
“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You
“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
“There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.”
― Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense
“A good book is an event in my life.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black
“Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
― Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts
“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
― Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
― Franz Kafka
“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates’ loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.”
― Walt Disney
“A house without books is like a room without windows.”
― Horace Mann
“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
“I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.”
― Annie Dillard, The Living
“From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.”
― Groucho Marx
“Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.”
― Stéphane Mallarmé
“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.”
― Astrid Lindgren
“The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”
― Joseph Joubert
“Be awesome! Be a book nut!”
― Dr. Seuss
“A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.”
― Caroline Gordon
“It doesn’t matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others
“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
