Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826

1. Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826 I cannot live without books.

2. Samuel Goldwyn, 1882-1974 I read part of it all the way through.

3. Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914? The covers of this book are too far apart.

4. George Eliot, 1819-80 No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

5. Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903 Reading is seeing by proxy.

6. Katherine Patterson The gift of reading, like all natural gifts, must be nourished or it will atrophy.

7. Edmund Wilson, 1895-1972 No two persons ever read the same book.

8. Malcolm X, 1925-65 I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me.  I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. 

9. bell hooks, 1952- Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.

10. Horace Mann, 1796-1859 A room without books is like a room without windows.

11. Cicero, 106-43 B.C. A room without books is like a body without a soul.

12. Coolio, 1963- I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book.

13. Emily Dickinson, 1830-86 There is no Frigate like a book To take us Lands away, Nor any coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry.

14. Ezra Pound, 1885-1972 Literature is news that STAYS news.

15. Mary Ellen Chase, 1887-1973 There is no substitute for books in the life of a child.

16. Mark Twain, 1835-1910 A classic is a book everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

17. Joseph Addison, 1672-1719 Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

18. Groucho Marx, 1890-1977 From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

19. Aneurin Bevan, 1897-1960 I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

20. Harper Lee, 1926- Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

21. Groucho Marx, 1890-1977 I must say that I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.

22. Montesquieu, 1689-1755 I’ve never known any trouble that an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.

23. Anna Quindlen, 1953- I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

24. John Ruskin, 1819-1900 All books can be divided into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

25. Dr. Seuss, 1904-91 The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

26. Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941 Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.

27. Moses Hadas, 1900-1966 This book fills a much needed gap.

28. Herbert Samuel, 1870-1963 A library is thought in cold storage.

29. Jorge Luis Borges, 1899-1986 I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

30. Jean Fritz, 1915- When I discovered libraries, it was like having Christmas every day.

31. Ralph Waldo Emerson,1803-82 What’s a book? Everything or nothing. The eye that sees it is all.

32. Erasmus, 1466-1536 When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.

33. James Baldwin, 1924-87 It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.

34. Heinrich Heine, 1797-1856 Wherever they burn books, sooner or later they will burn human beings as well.

35. Joseph Brodsky, 1940- There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

36. Ray Bradbury, 1920- You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

37. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1689-1762 No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

38. Walter Savage Landor, 1775-1864 What is reading but silent conversation?

39. Groucho Marx, 1890-1977 Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

40. W. H. Auden, 1907-73 Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

41. Voltaire, 1694-1778 The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

42. Gwendolyn Brooks, 1917-2000 Read between the lines. Don’t swallow everything.

43. Lewis Carroll, 1832-98 “What is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”

44. Confucius, c. 551 - c. 479 B.C. No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading – or surrender yourself to ignorance.

45. John Locke, 1632-1704 Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours.

46. Amy Lowell, 1874-1925 All books are either dreams or swords.

47. Montaigne, 1533-92 Every abridgement of a good book is a stupid abridgement.

48. Henry David Thoreau, 1817-62 Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they are written.

49. Arthur, Lord Balfour, 1848-1930 He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the even more refined accomplishments of skipping and skimming.

50. Helen Keller, 1880-1968 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.