Nothing compares to the experience of reading a good book. I’m always on the hunt for bookish quotes because, well – I’m a BIG book lover. I love to jot down book quotes into my morning journal, save them down onto Pinterest boards, and generally reflect back on some of the wisdom from my favorite stories and authors. So if you’re on the hunt for a bank of book lover quotes, this blog post is for you!
“So many books, so little time.” ― Frank Zappa
“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.” – Maya Angelou
“Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.” — Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.” ― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” – Walt Disney
“The weak are cruel. The strong have no need to be.” ― Alice Hoffman, The Foretelling
“There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” ― Neil Gaiman, Coraline
“The world was hers for the reading.” – Betty Smith
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” — Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey
“You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.” ― Paul Sweeney
“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.” – Carl Sagan
“It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others – even my nearest and dearest – there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book.” – Maureen Corrigan
“Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
“I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.” – Roald Dahl
“There is no friend as loyal as a book.” ― Ernest Hemingway
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” ― Anna Quindlen
“Wear the old coat and buy the new book.” – Austin Phelps
“Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book.” – Bill Watterson
“Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.” – Kate DiCamillo
“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” – Anne Herbert
“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” – Jorge Luis Borges
“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.” ― Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
“Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.” – David Levithan
“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” — Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
“Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.” – Henry Ward Beecher
“If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.” – J.K. Rowling
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”
― Joseph Addison
“It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live.” — Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.”
― Robertson Davies
“Books break the shackles of time – proof that humans can work magic.” – Carl Sagan
“Have books ‘happened’ to you? Unless your answer to that question is ‘yes,’ I’m unsure how to talk to you.” – Haruki Murakami
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” ― Charles W. Eliot
“For my whole life, my favorite activity was reading. It’s not the most social pastime.” – Audrey Hepburn
“Why, sometimes, I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” — Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” ― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
“We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.” – Wisława Szymborska
“This above all: To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” — William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we’re someone else, disrupting the delusion that we’re permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we’re saved!) other people are real again, and we’re fond of them.” – George Saunders
“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” ― Mortimer J. Adler
“Quiet people have the loudest minds.” ― Stephen King
“I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself.” ― Karen Marie Moning, Darkfever
“All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.” – Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet In Heaven
“My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.” — Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” – William Styron
“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
― Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life
“I’m wondering what to read next.” Matilda said. “I’ve finished all the children’s books.”
― Roald Dahl, Matilda
“Anything worth dying for is certainly worth living for.” — Joseph Heller, Catch-22
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” – Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
“I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.” ― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
“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 that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” – James Baldwin
“And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” – Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist
“None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.” – Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
“We lose ourselves in what we read, only to return to ourselves, transformed and part of a more expansive world.” ― Judith Butler
“It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.” — Roald Dahl, The Witches
“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.” — Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” ― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
“The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must be the one to write it.” ― Toni Morrison
“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.” – André Gide, Autumn Leaves
“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” – Fran Lebowitz
“I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book.” ― J.K. Rowling
“Oh, the places you’ll go! You’ll be on your way up! You’ll be seeing great sights! You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.” — Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go
“Libraries are the wardrobes of literature.” ― George Dyer
“Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.” – Malorie Blackman
“Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.” ― Alberto Manguel
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” – Harper Lee
“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” — Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
“You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy books and that’s kind of the same thing.” ― Anonymous
“Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.” – Holbrook Jackson
“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” – Lemony Snicket
“I divide all readers into two classes; those who read to remember and those who read to forget.” ― William Lyon Phelps
“A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.” ― Neil Gaiman
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” – Groucho Marx
“You see, unlike in the movies, there is no THE END sign flashing at the end of books. When I’ve read a book, I don’t feel like I’ve finished anything. So I start a new one.” ― Elif Shafak, The Bastard of Istanbul
“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.” – Diane Duane
“Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.” — William Goldman, The Princess Bride
“Well-behaved women seldom make history.” – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” — J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
“You want to remember that while you’re judging the book, the book is also judging you.” ― Stephen King, Night Shift
“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?” ― Henry Ward Beecher
Get busy living, or get busy dying. – Stephen King, Different Seasons
“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” – Margaret Fuller
If you’re looking for quotes about books, book quotes about life, or some of the best quotes from novels – I recommend checking out Goodreads. This is NOT sponsored, but I’m a big fan of Goodreads in general. Not only can you keep track of your TBR and leave reviews on books read, you can also find amazing quotes from books for extra inspiration.
Share your best bookish quotes in the comments down below!