World Book Day: 85 quotes on the joy of books and reading!
April 23 is designated by UNESCO as World Book Day, a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and marked in over 100 countries across the world. Each year, UNESCO selects the World Book Capital for a one-year period, effective 23 April onwards (Incheon, South Korea is the choice this year).
In this compilation in alphabetical order, we present you 85 quotes from around the world, on the joy and importance of books and reading! Go treat yourself to a new book of your choice, and gift one to a dear friend as well. If startups are your cup of tea, check out YourStory’s pick of Top 10 books for entrepreneurs from 2014, 2013 and 2012!
A book is a device to ignite the imagination. - Alan Bennett
A book is a dream that you hold in your hand. – Neil Gaiman
A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. - Edward P. Morgan
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul. - Franz Kafka
A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking. - Jerry Seinfield
A first book has some of the sweetness of a first love. - Robert Aris Willmott
A good book has no ending. - R.D. Cumming
A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit. - John Milton
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading. - William Styron
A house without books is like a room without windows. - Heinrich Mann
A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge. - George R.R. Martin
A room without books is like a body without a soul. - Marcus Tullius Cicero
A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it. - Samuel Johnson
Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. - P. J. O'Rourke
Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you'll die of a misprint. - Markus Herz
Books - the best antidote against the marsh-gas of boredom and vacuity. - George Steiner
Books are a uniquely portable magic. - Stephen King
Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time. - E.P. Whipple
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. - Henry Ward Beecher
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind. - James Russell Lowell
Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life. - Jesse Lee Bennett
Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home. - Anna Quindlen
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers. - Charles William Eliot
Books had instant replay long before televised sports. - Bern Williams
Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own. - William Hazlitt
Books were my pass to personal freedom. - Oprah Winfrey
Children are made readers on the laps of their parents. - Emilie Buchwald
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. - W. B. Yeats
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures. - Jessamyn West
Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one. - Augustine Birrell
Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Mark Twain
Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes. - John LeCarre
I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book. - Groucho Marx
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. - Jorge Luis Borges
I was born with a reading list I will never finish. - Maud Casey
I’ve never known any trouble that an hour’s reading didn’t assuage. - Charles de Secondat
If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. - Toni Morrison
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. - Haruki Murakami
I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done. - Steven Wright
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
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
It often requires more courage to read some books than it does to fight a battle. - Sutton Elbert Griggs
My best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read. - Abraham Lincoln
My test of a good novel is dreading to begin the last chapter. - Thomas Helm
Never judge a book by its movie. - J.W. Eagan
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me. - Anatole France
No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. - Confucius
No matter what his rank or position may be, the lover of books is the richest and the happiest. - J.A. Langford
No person who can read is ever successful at cleaning out an attic. - Ann Landers
Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. - Harry S. Truman
Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. - Frederick Douglass
One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind. - Ishmael Reed
Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere. - Mary Schmich
Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape. - Nora Ephron
Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. - Joseph Addison
Reading means borrowing. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Reading takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere. - Hazel Rochman
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you. - Harold Bloom
Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. - Edmund Burke
So many books, so little time. - Frank Zappa
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. - Francis Bacon
The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most. - Theodore Parker
The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. - Oliver Goldsmith
The greatest gift is a passion for reading. - Elizabeth Hardwick
The love of books is a love which requires neither justification, apology, nor defense. - J.A. Langford
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read. - Mark Twain
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. - Dr. Seuss
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. - Jane Austen
The wise man reads both books and life itself. - Lin Yutang
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. - Saint Augustine
The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. - Clarence Shepard Day
There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all. - Jacqueline Kennedy
There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing. - Isaac D'Israeli
There is no friend as loyal as a book. - Ernest Hemingway
There's so much more to a book than just the reading. - Maurice Sendak
This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum. - Elbert Hubbard
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. - Somerset Maugham
To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark. - Victor Hugo
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader. - Margaret Fuller
What is reading but silent conversation? - Walter Savage Landor
When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. - Christopher Morley
Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light. –Vera Nazarian
You cannot open a book without learning something. - Confucius
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