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Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book -- I call that vicious!

A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call for a book.

Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth, a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.

The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books, is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.

Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings -- as some savage tribes determine the power of muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser.

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouse holes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read, but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.

Borrowers of books -- those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.

Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message to us from the dead -- from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

There be some men are born only to suck out the poison of books.

Then I thought of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.