Notable & Quotable

Just a sampling of my favorite quotes:

 ”Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.”
— Molière

 ”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

 ”All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.” “
— Anna Quindlen

 ”A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”
— William Styron

 

 ”We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.”
— Henry Miller

“A good book is always on tap; it may be decanted and drunk a hundred times, and it is still there for further imbibement. “
— Holbrook Jackson

 ”Books are immortal sons deifying their sires. “
— Plato

“To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one. “ 
                                                                                                          ~Chinese Saying

 

 

 ”To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. “
— W. Somerset Maugham

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”
— Joseph Addison

“Never judge a book by its movie.”
— J.W. Eagan

 ”A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up children without surrounding them with books…. Children learn to read being in the presence of books.”
— Horace Mann

 ”Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.”
— Edmund Burke

 

“Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.”
— Augustine Birrell

“If you have never said “Excuse me” to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time. “
— Sherri Chasin Calvo

 ”The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are” is true enough, but I’d know you better if you told me what you reread. “
— Francois Mauriac

 ”For friends… do but look upon good Books: they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble.”
— Francis Bacon

“When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.”
— Clifton Fadiman

 ”Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
— Mark Twain

“Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled “This could change your life.” “
— Helen Exley

“To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list.”
— John Aiken

“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”
— Logan Pearsall Smith

 

“I’ve never known any trouble that an hour’s reading didn’t assuage”
— Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu

 ”Books serve to show a man that those or

iginal thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.”
— Abraham Lincoln

 

 ”It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”
— Oscar Wilde

 

“My test of a good novel is dreading to begin the last chapter. “
— Thomas Helm

 

 ”I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”
— Anna Quindlen

 

 ”You must be proud, bold, pleasant, resolute,
And now and then stab, when occasion serves.”
— Christopher Marlowe

 

 ”Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
— E.L. Doctorow

 

 ”I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of liking them. “
— Jane Austen

 

 ”I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything 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

 

 ”One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”
— Jane Austen