Wise Words about Books

“The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read.” 

Benjamin Franklin

“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.” 

Francis Bacon

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.” 

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” 

George R.R. Martin

“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

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” 
Groucho Marx

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” 
C.S. Lewis

“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 William Eliot

“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.” 
Francis Bacon

“Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head.” 

Paul Auster

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.” 
William Faulkner

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.” 
Tahereh Mafi

“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

Circle City Books and Music, Pittsboro, NC, September 23rd, 2014

This post is part of the 31 Days of Bibliophilia series.