Quotations

“Odd halfpennies which I got for some message run for the neighbours accumulated in time to half-crowns which were exchanged for The Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote, and the poems of Keats and Longfellow.”

Shows the determination with which he acquired books despite poverty · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“True it is that my plays are not exposed unto the world in volumes, to bear the title of works (as others).”

A modest refusal to package plays as monumental collected Works · Address to the Reader, The English Traveller

Thomas Heywood

“Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.”

Affirming the value of direct experience alongside reading · Essay, A Gossip on a Novel of Dumas

Robert Louis Stevenson

“I don't take the cigarette out of my mouth when I write Deceased over their letters. But one day I will write Deceased over many books.”

Contrasting the numb routine of casualty administration with a future reckoning through literature · Letter to Siegfried Sassoon, 10 October 1918

Wilfred Owen

“Books have the same enemies as man: fire, damp, beasts, time, and their own contents.”

Original: Les livres ont les mêmes ennemis que l'homme: le feu, l'humide, les bêtes, le temps, et leur propre contenu. — A witty catalogue of the physical and intellectual threats that books must survive. · Moralités (French)

Paul Valéry

“We hardly ever find the worth of books till we lose them; and it is then too late to value them.”

A reminder that the value of books is often recognised only after access to them has been lost. · Essay, On the Scarcity of Books

William Oldys

“You are right in supposing that I do not look with favour on the collecting of first editions and autographs, but it is a vice which is sometimes found in otherwise virtuous persons.”

Teasing collectors while politely acknowledging their enthusiasm · Letter to an autograph collector

A.E.Housman

“We enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another; we give no offence to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly.”

The solitary but rich society of books · Conversation / essay (as commonly attributed)

Walter Savage Landor

“Wherever there is insincerity in a book there can be no morality.”

Making sincerity fundamental to his conception of ethical writing · Essay, Immorality in Authorship

Robert Williams Buchanan

“Prefixing a preface is like keeping an invited friend at the hall-door, instead of conducting him at once into the house.”

Prefaces as unnecessary obstacles · Preface to The Hellenics

Walter Savage Landor

“I love to lose myself in other men's minds.”

Celebrating reading as a way of entering other minds · Essay

Books
Poetry

Charles Lamb

“What is reading but silent conversation.”

Capturing the intimate dialogue between reader and author · Imaginary Conversations

Walter Savage Landor

“Only the rarest kind of best is good enough for the young.”

A conviction that children deserve writing of the highest quality and seriousness. · Essay, On the Art of Writing

Walter de la Mare

“Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation.”

Celebrating books as gifts that carry thought across generations · The Improvement of the Mind

Isaac Watts

“Books are the friends that never desert us, and in solitude they become almost living companions.”

Celebrating reading as a dependable form of companionship. · Letter

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“Great are my riches.”

Her delighted response to receiving a large gift of books, revealing how readily she measured wealth in reading · Letter to an Oberlin friend, 1874

Edith M. Thomas

“A man is known by the company his mind keeps.”

Suggesting that the ideas and books we inhabit help reveal and form our character · Essay collection, Ponkapog Papers (1903)

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“A library like ours must exercise the largest hospitality. A great many books may be found in every large collection which remind us of those apostolic-looking old men who figure on the platform.”

A humorous defence of allowing even obsolete or imperfect books a place on the shelves · Address at the opening of the Medical Library at Boston

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

“The wealth of a bad book is reduced to its subject.”

Original: Le sujet d'un ouvrage est à quoi se réduit un mauvais ouvrage. — A cutting distinction between a genuinely realised work and one whose subject is its only attraction. · Autres Rhumbs (French)

Paul Valéry

“The fool and his bookplate are soon parted.”

A bibliophile's joke about destroying the meaning of ownership marks by distributing them as collectibles · Ponkapog Papers, Leaves from a Note Book (1903)

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.”

Celebrating the quiet exhilaration of wandering among books · Pericles and Aspasia

Walter Savage Landor

“A man who has a job, earns his living and can devote an hour a day to reading is lost to books when that hour is consumed by trivialities.”

Original: L'homme qui a un emploi, l'homme qui gagne sa vie et qui peut consacrer une heure par jour à la lecture, cette heure est dévorée par les affaires criminelles, les niaiseries incohérentes, les ragots et les faits les moins divers. — Valéry laments the competition between serious reading and the relentless stream of trivial information. · Regards sur le monde actuel (French)

Paul Valéry

“I have made a number of books, some of which are not unknown in England.”

An understated and characteristically modest description of his literary career · Letter to Emra Holmes

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.