Connect with Readers

Quotes #1

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.
—Mikhail Baryshnikov


Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.
—Carl Sagan


If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.
—Marc Chagall


An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
—Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand


When I get a little money I buy books, and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
—Erasmus


My conviction is that we can say marvelous things without using a barbarous vocabulary.
—Jean-Henri Fabre, 1823–1915


A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man’s history. It is a man’s duty to have books.
—Henry Ward Beecher


I cannot live without books.
—Thomas Jefferson


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


Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.
—William Butler Yeat


This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for his creatures. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will support you when all other recreations are gone. It will last until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.
—Anthony Trollope


It is very well worthwhile to be tormented for two or three years of one’s life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it.
—Jane Austen


Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goes out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.
—Cicero


You can’t get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.
—C. S. Lewis


Books are not dead things, but do contain a potency of life ... as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest extraction of that living intellect that bred them.
—John Milton


It is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times. If you are presently without, hurry without delay to the nearest shop and buy one of mine.
—Oliver Wendall Holmes


Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
—Harper Lee


I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
—Groucho Marx


Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.
—Jim Rohn


Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.
—Lemony Snicket


The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest [people] of the past centuries.
—Descartes


Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.
—Diane Duane


Books are a uniquely portable magic.
—Stephen King


I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.
—Orhan Pamuk


Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
—Margaret Fuller


People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
—Saul Bellow


I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
—Robert Louis Stevenson


Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.
—Louis L’Amour


We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.
—Jules Verne


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


Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.
—Ezra Pound


If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson


Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
—Henry David Thoreau

Reflection Prompts #1

What books are you reading now?
In what way(s) are they benefitting or uplifting you?

How regularly do you read God’s Word?
Books about God’s Word?
Think about the last time the Holy Spirit spoke to you through something you read. What was it?
What did God say?
How did it impact your life at the time?
What impact did it have long after you read it?

Poetry of Books #1

There Is no Frigate Like a Book

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry—
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll—
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears a Human soul.

Emily Dickinson

Poetry of Books #2

Where My Books Go

All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
Storm-darken’d or starry bright.

William Butler Yeats

Poetry of Books #3

Good Books

Good books are friendly things to own.
If you are busy they will wait.
They will not call you on the phone
Or wake you if the hour is late.
They stand together row by row,
Upon the low shelf or the high.
But if you’re lonesome this you know:
You have a friend or two nearby.

The fellowship of books is real.
They’re never noisy when you’re still.
They won’t disturb you at your meal.
They’ll comfort you when you are ill.
The lonesome hours they’ll always share.
When slighted they will not complain.
And though for them you’ve ceased to care
Your constant friends they’ll still remain.

Good books your faults will never see
Or tell about them round the town.
If you would have their company
You merely have to take them down.
They’ll help you pass the time away,
They’ll counsel give if that you need.
He has true friends for night and day
Who has a few good books to read.

Edgar Guest

Quote #2

I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
—C.S. Lewis

Reflective Prompts #2

What books have you read more than once?
Did they impact you differently each time?

Quote #3

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

Reflective Prompt #3

What books have made you feel this way?

Quotes #4

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson


Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
—Frederick Douglas


A book is a gift you can open again and again.
—Garrison Keillor


Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad—and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out.
—William Faulkner


I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.
—Kurt Vonnegut


Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks.
—Dr. Seuss