Nothing is more beautiful than a beautiful book. – Joseph Joubert (1754–1824), translated from French by George H. Calvert, 1

Borrowers of books — those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. – Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia, "The Two Races of Men," 1822

There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs. – Henry Ward Beecher

Reading means borrowing. – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms