"All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been:

it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books."

—Thomas Carlyle

"In the best books, great men talk to us,
give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.
God be thanked for books.
They are the voices of the distant and the dead,
and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
Books are true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them,
the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest."

—William Ellery Channing

"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside of us."

—Franz Kafka

"A truly good book teaches me better than to read it.

I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. . . .

What I began by reading, I must finish by acting."

—Henry David Thoreau

"Life being very short, and the quiet hours few,

we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books."

—John Ruskin

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page."

—St. Augustine

"For books are more than books, they are the life,

the very heart and core of ages past.

The reason why men lived, and worked, and died,

the essence and quintessence of their lives."

—Amy Lowell

"Book-love, I say again, lasts throughout life, it never flags or fails,

but, like beauty itself, is a joy forever."

—Holbrook Jackson

"A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit,

embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."

—John Milton