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Books

A blessed companion is a book, — a book that, fitly chosen, is a lifelong friend,… a book that, at a touch, pours its heart into our own. – Douglas Jerrold

[W]omen and books should be looked at daily. – Dutch Proverb

Reading — the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay. – William Styron

[R]eading time is still limited no matter how many commitments of work or friendship I am willing to ditch in favor of the pages. – Francis Spufford (b.1964), “Confessions of an English Fiction Eater,” The Child

There are books from which one inhales an exquisite air. – Joseph Joubert (1754–1824), translated from French by George H. Calvert, 1

A large, still book is a piece of quietness, succulent and nourishing in a noisy world, which I approach and imbibe with “a sort of greedy enjoyment,” as Marcel Proust said of those rooms of his old home whose air was “saturated with the bouquet of silence.” – Holbrook Jackson

Psychopathia librorum…. I surround myself with the printed word. – Sven Birkerts (b.1951), “Notes from a Confession,” The Agni Review, No.22 (1985)

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you. – Harold Bloom

The time to read is any time: no apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary. It is the only art which can be practised at any hour of the day or night, whenever the time and inclination comes, that is your time for reading; in joy or sorrow, health or illness. – Holbrook Jackson

I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments. – Lord Chesterfield

This nice and subtle happiness of reading, this joy not chilled by age, this polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene life-long intoxication. – Logan Pearsall Smith

Readers of novels. I sometimes think that I could, if put to it, pick the real readers of novels out of a crowd. They have a strangeness about the eye, almost as if there were an extra bit of lens on the cornea…. The glance of a reader shows me a soul with a different orientation to time… – Sven Birkerts (b.1951), “Notes from a Confession,” The Agni Review, No.22 (1985)

Books that have become classics — books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal — always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay. – Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The writer in western civilization has become not a voice of his tribe, but of his individuality. This is a very narrow-minded situation. – Aharon Appelfeld

If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor. – W. H. Auden

Literature is without proofs. By which it must be understood that it cannot prove, not only what it says, but even that it is worth the trouble of saying it. – Roland Barthes

In the present age, alas! our pens are ravished by unlettered authors and unmannered critics, that make a havoc rather than a building, a wilderness rather than a garden. But, a lack! what boots it to drop tears upon the preterit? – Aubrey Beardsley

Do not worry about the incarnation of ideas. If you are a poet, your works will contain them without your knowledge — they will be both moral and national if you follow your inspiration freely. – Vissarion Belinsky

Child! Do not throw this book about;
Refrain from the unholy pleasure
Of cutting all the pictures out!
Preserve it as your chiefest treasure. – Hilaire Belloc

The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life which does not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest. – Robert Benchley