In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine--everybody drinks water.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.