You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things which tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.

Books are not men and yet they are alive.

The covers of this book are too far apart.

When you find that a book is poor ... waste no more time upon it.

Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books.

The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

What one knows best is ... what one has learned not from books but as a result of books, through the reflections to which they have given rise.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, and give us their most precious thoughts.