Books and Reading Quotations.

What is second best to books about books? Why, books full of quotes about books and reading, of course. Here are a few gems found in Books and Reading: a Book of Quotations, edited by Bill Bradfield (Dover Thrift Publications, 2002.) These quotes tickled me today. I'll share more another time. I'm only up to page ten so there will be more to share later..

I'm a voracious reader. You have to read to survive. People who read for pleasure are wasting their time. Reading isn't fun, it's indispensable.----WOODY ALLEN

The only real use of books is to make a person think for himself. If a book will not set one to thinking, it is not worth shelf room.----ALEPH BEY

Morality is not the issue in [fairy] tales, but rather, assurance that one can succeed... More can be learned from them about the inner problems of human beings and of the right solutions to their predicaments in any society than from any other type of story within a child's comprehension.----BRUNO BETTELHEIM

The great threat to the young and pure in heart is not what they read but what they don't read.----HEYWOOD BROUN 

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 

Of all the odd crazes, the craze to be forever reading new books is one of the oddest. ----AUGUSTINE BIRRELL

(I was just thinking about this point. Everyone wants to read the newest best seller and in the process ignore many wonderful books published in previous years.)

A classic is a  book that has never finished saying what it has to say.----ITALO CALVINO

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.----ANATOLE BROYARD 

I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.----NICHOLAS BAKER