107 Book Quotes

Words have the power to inspire, heal, and transport us to different realms. In literature, a single quote can encapsulate the essence of an entire book, touching our hearts and sparking our imaginations. Whether it's a classic novel, a modern bestseller, or an obscure gem, great books often leave us with unforgettable lines that resonate long after the last page is turned. Here, we've curated a collection of the top 107 book quotes that capture the profound, the poignant, and the playful moments of the written word. Let these quotes be a reminder of the beauty and wisdom found within the pages of your favorite stories.

1. “Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.” - George Bernard Shaw

2. “In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” - Mark Twain

3. “There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.” - Bertrand Russell

4. “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” - Jane Austen

5. “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

6. “I cannot live without books.” - Thomas Jefferson

7. “There was something appealing in thinking of a character with a secret life that her author knew nothing about. Slipping off while the author's back was turned, to find love in her own way. Showing up just in time to deliver the next bit of dialogue with an innocent face.” - Karen Joy Fowler

8. “Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.” - Susan Sontag

9. “If you cannot read all your books...fondle them---peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.” - Winston S. Churchill

10. “Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.” - Paxton Hood

11. “Reader's Bill of Rights1. The right to not read 2. The right to skip pages 3. The right to not finish 4. The right to reread 5. The right to read anything 6. The right to escapism 7. The right to read anywhere 8. The right to browse 9. The right to read out loud 10. The right to not defend your tastes” - Daniel Pennac

12. “Unless their use by readers bring them to life, books are indeed dead things.” - Lawrence Clark Powell

13. “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

14. “When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.” - Diane Setterfield

15. “The world was hers for the reading.” - Betty Smith

16. “No one knows as well as I how much nonsense is printed in books.” - Julia Quinn

17. “Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.” - Christopher Hitchens

18. “How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!” - Walter Benjamin

19. “Cakes are like books: There are new ones you want to read and old favorites you want to reread.” - Ellen Rose

20. “I don't remember ever feeling lonely; in fact, on the rare occasions when I met other children I found their games and their talk far less interesting than the adventures and dialogues I read in my books.” - Alberto Manguel

21. “In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of self-serving rules that pretend to replace or translate those of the shapeless universe beyond. ” - Alberto Manguel

22. “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.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

23. “A great book is a homing deviceFor navigating paradise.A good book somehow makes you careAbout the comfort of a chair.A bad book owes to many treesA forest of apologies.” - J. Patrick Lewis

24. “To live among such excellent helps as our libraries afford, to have so many silent wise companions whenever we please.” - Richard Baxter

25. “Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a 'good' book. A book is 'good' only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error. ” - Christopher Morley

26. “Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes–characters even–caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you” - Diane Setterfield

27. “A good book will pull you in from the beginning and take you on a journey you'll never forget.” - Lauren Hammond

28. “I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply "there is a book.” - Scarlett Thomas

29. “For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

30. “-You're pretty hard-boiled, Tinker Bell.-Call me that name again and you'll be wondering how your bollocks wound up lodged in your windpipe--from below. Just because we don't get to your side of things much anymore doesn't mean we don't know anything. 'If you believe in fairies, clap your hands!' If you believe in fairies, kiss my rosy pink arse is more like it. Now are you going to shut your gob or not?” - Tad Williams

31. “Wisdom.... comes not from age, but from education and learning.” - Anton Chekhov

32. “A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones.” - Abraham Lincoln

33. “Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. Once of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.” - Paul Theroux

34. “Lire un bon livre, ça redonne envie de vivre, ça vous donne envie de partir, A la recherche du temps perdu.” - Pierre Perret

35. “Books are for nothing but to inspire” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

36. “Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.” - Carol Shields

37. “People shock me when they say they never read. When I was young, if people didn't read they would never admit it. Now, its quite acceptable to be anti-intellectual.” - Joan Vass

38. “Epics are never written about libraries. They exist on whim; it depends on if the conquering army likes to read.” - Patricia A. McKillip

39. “Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.” - Abraham Lincoln

40. “Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.” - Yann Martel

41. “We keep quiet about what we read. Our enjoyment of a book remains a jealously guarded secret. Perhaps because there`s no need to talk, or because it takes time to distill what we've read before we can say anything. Silence is our guarantee of intimacy. We might have finished reading but we`re still livingthe book.” - Daniel Pennac

42. “If you`re wondering how you`ll find time, it means you don`t really want to read. Because nobody`s ever got time. Children certainly haven`t, nor have teenagers or grown-ups. Life always gets in the way. <...>Time to read is always time stolen. <...>Stolen from what? From the tyranny of living.”- p.125” - Daniel Pennac

43. “If you have feelings about reading, you feel the rhythm of prose or of a poem like music. It awakens something in your soul and then of course you study, read, you grow up and you begin to understand the message and that is the first step towards understanding life.” - Maria Kodama

44. “Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book.” - Fulton Sheen

45. “As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

46. “I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.” - Orhan Pamuk

47. “His novel or book of poems, decent, adequate, arises not from an exercise of style or will, as the poor unfortunate believes, but as the result of an exercise of concealment. There must be many books, many lovely pines, to shield from hungry eyes the book that really matters, the wretched cave of our misfortune, the magic flower of winter!” - Roberto Bolaño

48. “Entrei numa livraria. Pus-me a contar os livros que há para ler e os anos que terei de vida. Não chegam! Não duro nem para metade da livraria! Deve haver certamente outras maneiras de uma pessoa se salvar, senão… estou perdido.” - Almada Negreiros

49. “Almost I feel the pulsebeat of the ages, Now swift, now slow, beneath my fingertips.The heartthrobs of the prophets and the sagesBeat through these bindings; and my quick hand slipsOld books from dusty shelves, in eager seekingFor truths the flaming tongues of the ancients tell;For the words of wisdom that they still are speakingAs clearly as an echoing silver bell.Here is the melody that lies foreverAt the deep heart of living; here we keepThe accurate recorded discs that neverCan be quite silenced, though their makers sleepThe still deep sleep, so long as a seeker findsThe indelible imprint of their moving minds.” - Grace Noll Crowell

50. “However much you study, you cannot know without action. A donkey laden with books is neither an intellectual nor a wise man. Empty of essence, what learning has he whether upon him is firewood or book?” - Saadi of Shiraz

51. “Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel.” - Bohumil Hrabal

52. “Books are a hard-bound drug with no danger of an overdose. I am the happy victim of books.” - Karl Lagerfield

53. “I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.” - Dorothy Parker

54. “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” - Anonymous

55. “I gave him my best cryptic smile. He did not fall down to his feet, kiss my shoes, and promise me the world. I must be getting rusty.” - Ilona Andrews

56. “if a book isn't self-explanatory, then it isn't worth reading.” - Paulo Coelho

57. “Kauf nie ein Buch um der Bewunderung anderer wegen.” - Cody McFadyen

58. “‎"Based on a true story"? No, thanks. I prefer "based on a true imagination".” - Enkelejd Lamaj

59. “You can’t enjoy art or books in a hurry.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

60. “I am not man or beast; I am bibliosexual, and a seedy bibliosexual who haunts the streets, laden with carrier bags held by blistered fingers, stooping under the weight of the rucksack that has brought on sciatica and a Dickensian demeanour.” - Robin Ince

61. “Ένα βιβλίο είναι μια ιστορία για το μυαλό. Ένα τραγούδι είναι μια ιστορία για την ψυχή.” - Pio Eric

62. “So many FREAKS and not enough CIRCUSES!” - Rachel Renée Russel

63. “أحب الكتب أكثر من الأفلام. فالأفلام تخبرك ما تفكر به. أما الكتاب الجيد يدعك تختار أفكارك بنفسك. في الأفلام تشاهد بيتا باللون الأحمر. في الكتاب، يقول لك هناك بيت أحمر، ويتركك تضع التفاصيل، تختار تصميم السقف، تركن سيارتك أمامه...الخ خيالي دائما ما يتفوق على كل جديد تأتي به الأفلام” - Karen Marie Moning

64. “Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.” - Lisa See

65. “Everybody in the world ought to care for books, and if there are some who do not, why that is a perfectly convincing reason why books ought to be given to them, to be a rebuke to them and, perchance, to rescue them from the error of their ways.” - Willis Johnson

66. “People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe.” - Neil Gaiman

67. “It was not merely that his brother was dead. His brain, too young to realize the full paradox, wondered with an obscure self- pity why it was that the pulse of his brother's fear went on and on, when Francis was now where he had always been told there was no more terror and no more--darkness.” - Graham Greene

68. “I spent the rest of the day in someone else's story. The rare moments that I put the book down, my own pain returned in burning stabs.” - Amy Plum

69. “Women's fiction is just a marketing category, designed to appeal more to women than to men. But there are stories in that category that any human being would like.” - Kristine Grayson

70. “Probably all of us, writers and readers alike, set out into exile, or at least into a certain kind of exile, when we leave childhood behind...The immigrant, the nomad, the traveler, the sleepwalker all exist, but not the exile, since every writer becomes an exile simply by venturing into literature, and every reader becomes an exile simply by opening a book.” - Roberto Bolaño

71. “[...]No book can be really complete in this life; it has to end where the author's time and understanding end. There is always something left unsaid. I look forward to the life to come as the unending last chapter of all the good books I have ever read.” - Kathryn Lindskoog

72. “I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' - and one brave deed is worth a thousand.” - Edward Abbey

73. “The reality of a serious writer is a reality of many voices, some of them belonging to the writer, some of them belonging to the world of readers at large.” - Aberjhani

74. “Sure, I knew the differences between a space opera and a hard-boiled detective story and a historical novel...but I never cared about such differences. It seemed to me, then as now, that there are good stories and bad stories, and that was the only distinction that truly mattered.” - George R.R. Martin

75. “People love to read about sins and errors, but not their own.” - Barbara Kingsolver

76. “she kept sliding down, in small half-willing surrenders, till she was a heap, with the book held tiringly above her face.” - Alan Hollinghurst

77. “Books have survived television, radio, talking pictures, circulars (early magazines), dailies (early newspapers), Punch and Judy shows, and Shakespeare's plays. They have survived World War II, the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, and the fall of the Roman Empire. They even survived the Dark Ages, when almost no one could read and each book had to be copied by hand. They aren't going to be killed off by the Internet.” - Vicki Myron

78. “I guess that’s the beauty of books. When they finish they don’t really finish.” - Markus Zusak

79. “For every book you buy, you should buy the time to read it.” - Karl Lagerfeld

80. “The prefect evening...lying down on the couch beside the bookcase and reading himself sleepy...Jim lying opposite him at the other end of the couch, also reading; the two of them absorbed in their books yet so completely aware of each other's presence.” - Christopher Isherwood

81. “I won't be sad too often,If they bury me in the libraryWith bookworms in my coffin.” - J. Patrick Lewis

82. “I wondered what it would be like to die. Was it like going to sleep or like waking up? Was there no more time? Or did time go on forever?” - Grace McCleen

83. “Una mujer mediocre es como un libro malo: hacen dudar de la literatura entera, de lo femenino universal” - Francisco Umbral

84. “Goodwill to Spazzy up in gerbil heaven. Sorry sorry sorry. I stopped eating meat the day of the massacre, as penance for Spazzy. I've been a vegetarian since age six, all for the love of a gerbil.” - Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

85. “And the non-reading of books, you will object, should be characteristic of all collectors? This is news to me, you may say. It is not news at all. experts will bear me out when I say that it is the oldest thing in the world. Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, “And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?” “Not one-tenth of them. I don’t suppose you use your Sevres china every day?” - Walter Benjamin

86. “We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.” - Peter S. Beagle

87. “For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.” - Herman Melville

88. “The Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice. So let all readers of books take warning!” - Hope Mirrlees

89. “Isabel is looking at several collections of research journals. 'She would understand the issues if she chose to open one of the volumes, but she knew that there were conversations within which she would never have the time to participate in. And that, of course, was the problem with any large collection of books, whether in a library or a bookshop: one might feel intimidated by the fact that there was simply too many to read and not know where to start.” - Alexander McCall Smith

90. “The most important thing about reading is not the level of sophistication of the books on your shelf. There is no prerequisite reading regimen for being a bookworm.” - Lauren Leto

91. “My favourite place in the whole city was the Sempere & Sons bookshop on Calle Santa Anna. It smelled of old paper and dust and it was my sanctuary, my refuge.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

92. “Teaching others, he corrected himself.” - Dejan Stojanovic

93. “The game itself is bigger than the winning.” - Dejan Stojanovic

94. “You mark and celebrate errors, transforming failures into successes.” - Dejan Stojanovic

95. “Nobility is not only in forgiveness.” - Dejan Stojanovic

96. “It is very dangerous to get caught without something to read.” - Elizabeth Savage

97. “I settle into my imagination so that I might be someone when the real world tells me I'm no one.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

98. “There was going to be a spot for me in this joint, the earth, after all. It was never going to be a great match for someone as bright and strange as me, but books were going to make it survivable.” - Anne Lamott

99. “We, and I think I'm speaking for many writers, don't know what it is that sometimes comes to make our books alive. All we can do is write dutifully and day after day, every day, giving our work the very best of what we are capable. I don't that we can consciously put the magic in; it doesn't work that way. When the magic comes, it's a gift.” - Madeleine L'Engle

100. “Do you think she is?" Her voice trembled. Her heart throbbed as she waited for him to answer. "You think they've killed her?"Every moment wrapped around Scarlet's neck, strangling her, until the only possiblbe word from Wolf's mouth had to be yes. Yes, she was dead. Yes, she was gone. They'd murdered her. These monsters had murdered her.Scarlet pressed her palms into the crate, trying to push through the plastic. "Say it.""No," he murmured, shoulder sinking, "No, I don't think they've killed her. Not yet."Scarlet shivered with relief. She covered her face with both hands, dizzy with the hurricane of emotions. "Thank the stars," she whispered. "Thank you.” - Marissa Meyer

101. “These two oo in "book" are like the two eyes of a reader who fell in love with a story.” - Stefanos Livos

102. “A library of wisdom, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it. Whoever therefore claims to be zealous of truth, of happiness, of wisdom or knowledge, must become a lover of books.” - Plato

103. “Read not for the facts but for the angles of thinking.” - William Upski Wimsatt

104. “Books might be your passion but you can’t fuck a paperback.” - Alexandra Potter

105. “I have never experienced a sorrow that was not relieved by an hour of reading.” - Daniel Pennac

106. “They were...no ordinary group, gathering together to kill an evening, to seek refuge from critical husbands and demanding children while idly discussing their new best-seller. They met because literature was their shared passion. Books were as important to them as breath itself. They shared the ability to immerse themselves in the lives of fictional characters, to argue passionately about the development of plots, about decisions taken, dilemmas resolved.” - Gloria Goldreich

107. “There's nothing on Earth like really nailing the last line of a big book. You have 200 pages to tickle their fancy, and seven words to break their heart.” - Alex de Campi