Everything in this book may be wrong. [The Savior's Manual]
~ Richard Bach

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.
~ Gaston Bachelard

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
~ Francis Bacon

Some books are to be tasted; others to be swallowed; and some few to be chewed and digested.
~ Francis Bacon

Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.
~ Nicholson Baker

Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends.
~ Dawn Adams

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.
~ Joseph Addison

Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
~ Joseph Addison

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
~ Mortimer J. Adler

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
~ Mortimer J. Adler

That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
~ Amos Bronson Alcott

Beware of the person of one book.
~ St. Thomas Aquinas

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.
~ Isaac Asimov

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
~ John Aubrey

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
~ W. H. Auden

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
~ W. H. Auden

When the book comes out it may hurt you -- but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.
~ James Baldwin

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.
~ Arthur James Balfour

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.
~ E.S. Barrett

The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.
~ Sir James M. Barrie