If all the crowns of Europe were placed at my disposal on condition that I should abandon my books and studies, I should spurn the crowns away and stand by the books.
– Francois Fenelon
Books
It is well to remember that reading books about the Bible is a very different thing to searching the Word for oneself.
– Harry Ironside
Books | The Bible | Reading
Many a preacher misses the mark because, though he knows books, he does not know men.
– James Stalker
Preaching | Books
Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.
– Helen Keller
Books
Next to the Bible, the book that I value most is John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. I believe I have read it through at least a hundred times. It is a volume of which I never seem to tire.
– Charles Spurgeon
Books
Do not be influenced by the importance of the writer, and whether his learning be great or small, but let the love of pure truth draw you to read. Do not inquire, Who said this? but pay attention to what is said.
– Thomas a Kempis
Books | Truth | Learning
They are not the best students who are most dependent on books. What can be got out of them is at best only material; a man must build his house for himself.
– George Macdonald
Books | Education
A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.
– Assorted Authors
Books | Reading
The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
– Augustine
Books | Reading
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
– G.K. Chesterton
Books
If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.
– Thomas Carlyle
Books | Time | Reading
Books are not men and yet they stay alive.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Books
I read hard, or not at all; never skimming, and never turning aside to merely inviting books; and Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Jonathan Edwards, have passed, like the iron atoms of the blood, into my mental constitution.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Books | Reading
As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other, you will find what is needful for you in a book.
– George Macdonald
Books
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
– John Greenleaf Whittier
Books | Music
Talking over the things which you have read with your companions fixes them on the mind.
– Isaac Watts
Books | Reading
Beware of the person of one book.
– Thomas Aquinas
Books
Multifarious reading weakens the mind more than doing nothing, for it becomes a necessity, at last, like smoking: and is an excuse for the mind to lie dormant whilst thought is poured in, and runs through, a clear stream over unproductive gravel, on which not even mosses grow. It is the idlest of all idleness, and leaves more of impotency than any other.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Books | Reading | Idleness
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
– Henry Ward Beecher
Books
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
– G.K. Chesterton
Books
What a world of wit is here packed together! I know not whether the sight doth more dismay or comfort me. It dismays me to think that here is so much I cannot know; it comforts me to think that this variety yields so good helps to know what I should. Blessed be the memory of those who have left their blood, their spirits, their lives, in these precious books, and have willingly wasted themselves into these during monuments, to give light unto others.
– Joseph Hall
Books | Comfort
The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that aliment, whose property is to feed it.
– Hannah More
Books | Meditation
An index is a necessary implement, without which a large author is but a labyrinth without a clue to direct the readers within.
– Thomas Fuller
Books
Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.
– Oswald Chambers
Books
In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.
– John Selden
Books | Reading
Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.
– Hosea Ballou
Books
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
– Francis Bacon
Books
The advertisements in a newspaper are more full knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Books | Community
Amidst the flood of dangerous reading, I plead for my Master’s book; I call upon you not to forget the book of the soul. Do not let newspapers, novels, and romances be read, while the prophets and Apostles be despised. Do not let the exciting and sensual swallow up your attention, while the edifying and the sanctifying can find no place in your mind.
– J. C. Ryle
Books | Scripture
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
– G.K. Chesterton
Books | Reading
I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.
– Harriet Beecher Stowe
Books
You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.
– Assorted Authors
Books
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
– G.K. Chesterton
Books
There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them – the senses, intelligent companions, and books.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Books
Show me a man’s books and show me a man’s companions–and I will tell you what sort of a man he is.
– William Tiptaft
Books | Friendship
How different is the poet from the mystic. The former uses symbols, knowing they are symbols; the latter mistakes them for realities.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Books
Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.
– Francis Bacon
Books
If thou desire to profit, read with humility, simplicity, and faithfulness; nor even desire the repute of learning.
– Thomas a Kempis
Books | Learning | Reading
Books on psychology or economics or politics are as continuously metaphorical as books of poetry or devotion.
– C.S. Lewis
Books | Psychology
If the riches of the Indies, or the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe, were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading, I would spurn them all.
– Francois Fenelon
Books | Finances
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Books | Beauty
A book that is shut is but a block.
– Thomas Fuller
Books
Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.
– Thomas Fuller
Books | Learning
As a man may be eating all day, and for want of digestion is never nourished, so these endless readers may cram themselves in vain with intellectual food.
– Isaac Watts
Books
There are some so-called Christian homes today with books on the shelves of the library that have no more business there than a rattler crawling about on the floor, or a poison within the child’s reach.
– Billy Sunday
Books
It is not the number of books you read, nor the variety of sermons you hear, nor the amount of religious conversation in which you mix, but it is the frequency and earnestness with which you meditate on these things till the truth in them becomes your own and part of your being, that ensures your growth.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Education | Growth | Books
Everywhere I have sought rest and found it not except sitting apart in a nook with a little book.
– Thomas a Kempis
Books | Rest
Many works of fiction may be read with safety; some even with profit; but the constant familiarity, even with such as are not exceptionable in themselves, relaxes the mind, which needs hardening; dissolves the heart, which wants fortifying; stirs the imagination, which wants quieting; irritates the passions, which want calming; and, above all, disinclines and disqualifies for active virtues and for spiritual exercises.
– Hannah More
Books
Beware you are not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.
– John Wesley
Love | Books | Knowledge
A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.
– Oswald Chambers
Books
A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Books
When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Books | Money
You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.
– C.S. Lewis
Books
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
– G.K. Chesterton
Books
Your library is your paradise.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Books
By burning Luther’s books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men’s minds of him.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Books | Reasoning
A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Books
If a book has no index or good table of contents, it is very useful to make one as you are reading it.
– Isaac Watts
Books
Value all books in proportion as they are agreeable to Scripture. Those that are nearest to it are the best, and those that are farthest from it, and most contrary to it, the worst.
– J. C. Ryle
Books
Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message to us from human souls we never saw, and yet these arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.
– Charles Kingsley
Books | Comfort