A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Books are delightful when prosperity happily smiles; when
adversity threatens, they are inseparable comforters. They give
strength to read more

Books are delightful when prosperity happily smiles; when
adversity threatens, they are inseparable comforters. They give
strength to human compacts, nor are grave opinions brought
forward without books. Arts and sciences, the benefits of which
no mind can calculate. depend upon books.

A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.

A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.

I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed -- and one of them hadn't even been colored read more

I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed -- and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.

Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.

Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.

Hark, the world so loud,
And they, the movers of the world, so still!

Hark, the world so loud,
And they, the movers of the world, so still!

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading read more

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in read more

The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.