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| The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. | | Voltaire | |
| The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them. | | Samuel Butler | |
| The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment. They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. | | Gilbert K. Chesterton | |
| The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business. | | John Steinbeck | |
| The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it. | | Ralph Waldo Emerson | |
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| The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public | | Chamfort | |
| The way a book is read - which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book - can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts in it. Anyone who can read, can learn to read deeply and thus live more fully. | | Norman Cousins | |
| There is an enormous redundancy in every well-written book. With a well-written book I only read the right-hand page and allow my mind to work on the left-hand page. With a poorly written book I read every word. | | Marshall McLuhan | |
| There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life. | | Walt Disney | |
| These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. | | Gilbert Highet | |
| This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. | | Dorothy Parker | |
| This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force. | | Dorothy Parker | |
| To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it. | | Herman Melville | |
| Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either. | | Gore Vidal | |
| Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought. | | Harry S Truman | |
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| What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books. | | Thomas Carlyle | |
| When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business. | | Flannery O'Connor | |
| When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek for no other rule to judge the event by; it is good and made by a good workman | | Jean de la Bruyere | |
