If you have read these classic books then chances are you are already familiar with these inspirational quotes.
When a man says he sees nothing in a book, he very often means that he does not see himself in it.
– A.W. Hare and J.C. Hare, Guesses at Truth
I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I would desire to have no other prison than a library, and to be chained together with as many good authors.
– Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
Every person of tolerable education has been considerably influenced by the books he has read.
– John Foster, On a Man’s Writing Memoirs of Himself
I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading.
– Thomas Babington Macaulay
I shall die reading; since my book and a grave are so near.
– John Donne, Letters to Several Persons of Honour
In my garden I spend my days; in my library I spend my nights.
– Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp
It is difficult, almost impossible, to find the book from which something either valuable or amusing may not be found, if the proper alembic be applied.
– John Hill Burton, The Book-Hunter
In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.
– William Ellery Channing, Self-Culture
Let us not forget the genial miraculous force we have known to proceed from a book.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoughts on Modern Literature
Cultivate above all things a taste for reading.
– Robert Lowe, Speech to the Students of the Croydon Science and Art Schools
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
– Sir Richard Steele, Tatler
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours.
– John Locke, Conduct of the Understanding
Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural.
– Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp
Libraries are the wardrobes of literature.
– George Dyer
There is no pleasure so cheap, so innocent, and so remunerative as the real, hearty pleasure and taste for reading.
– Robert Lowe, Speech to the Students of the Croydon Science and Art Schools
Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book!
– Charles Kingsley, Village Sermons: On Books
If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, Quotation and Originality
Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
– William Godwin, The Inquirer: Of an Early Taste for Reading
One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books.
– Amos Bronson Alcott, Tablets
The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in, anyhow.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Poet at the Breakfast-Table
Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.
– Joseph Addison, Spectator
Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age.
– Jeremy Collier, Essays upon several Moral Subjects
Books are the best type of the influence of the past.
– William Wordsworth, Personal Talk
We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their sterling and intrinsic merit.
– Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon
Read few books well.
– John Horne Tooke, Recollections of S. Rogers
We expect a great man to be a good reader.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, Quotation and Originality
Reading maketh a full man.
– Francis Bacon, Essays
Some read to think,—these are rare; some to write,—these are common; and some read to talk,—and these form the great majority.
– Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon
A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading.
– Jeremy Collier, Essays upon several Moral Subjects
Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.
– William Godwin, The Inquirer: Of an Early Taste for Reading
Novels are sweets.
– William Makepeace Thackeray, Roundabout Papers: On a Lazy Idle Boy
The novel, in its best form, I regard as one of the most powerful engines of civilization ever invented.
– John F.W. Herschel, Address to the Subscribers to the Windsor Public Library
More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye.
– Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Caxtoniana
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