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Bookish Quotes + a Holiday Giveaway!



by Danielle J. Dresser 

I love books (why do you think I’m in publishing). I love quotations (I once asked for a Bartlett’s Book of Quotations for Christmas, and my mother—who has multiple degrees and reads more than I do—told me I was a nerd). So it should be no surprise that I love quotations that are about books and reading. Here are some I’ve collected over the years—I hope you enjoy them!

“There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.” —Oscar Wilde

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
- Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I am simply a ‘book drunkard.’ Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.” – Lucy Maud Montgomery

“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 W. Eliot

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” —C. S. Lewis

“If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books in their house, don’t sleep with them. I think that’s very important.” —John Waters

“A good book is the precious life-blood of the master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond a life.” —John Milton

“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” —Victor Hugo

“Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.” —Salman Rushdie

“She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.” —Louisa May Alcott

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” ―Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”  J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye


“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.” —John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.” ―Voltaire

“How well he's read, to reason against reading!” —William Shakespeare

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” —Joyce Carol Oates

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”  —Ernest Hemingway

“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.” —Madeleine L’Engle

“My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” —Malcolm X

“Reading brings us unknown friends.” —Honoré de Balzac

“There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book.” —Marcel Proust

“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.” —Maya Angelou

Do you have any favorite quotes? Share them in the comments—they don’t have to be about books only! I’ll choose 2 random winners on Monday to receive a prize pack of our 4 holiday romance novels: The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby by Carolyn Brown, Lady Jenny’s Christmas Portrait by Grace Burrowes, The Christmas He Loved Her by Juliana Stone, and A SEAL Wolf Christmas by Terry Spear.
Open to US and Canada only, and please be sure to leave an email address so I can easily contact the winners. Authors, this is open to you, too!

Comments

  1. This has always been one of my favorites. "All dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them."

    -Walt Disney

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  2. "This, too, shall pass," has always been a favorite of mine. Love, love your list. I'm saving it!

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  3. What a great list. I love quotes! Here are a few of my favorites:

    Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.--Will Rogers

    If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.--Nora Ephron

    I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress. --Pres. Ronald Regan

    The doctors told me that I would never walk, but my mother told me I would, so I believed my mother.--Wilma Rudolph

    Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.--Thomas Edison

    Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself. --Eleanor Roosevelt

    Thanks for a fun post. mochfly(at)swbell(dot)net

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  4. LIfe is like a box of chocolate. You never know what you will get. So true.

    gmapeony@yahoo.com

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  5. A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult that it is for others.

    I love your quotes, Danielle. Some of my faves are on there.

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  6. 'If money can fix it, it's not a problem' - tho many people are feeling the crunch, some things like some health problems can't be fixed no matter how much money you have.

    sallans d at yahoo dot com

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  7. Oh, I love most of those quotes. I use to have a whole collection of my favorite ones and then my computer crashed and I never did start another one. One quote I always say is "Never say Never" because I did and it came back and bit me in the @ss lol.

    catslady5(at)aol.com

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  8. A lot of good quotes!

    Tomorrow is another day is one of my favorites.

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  9. Here's my email - I forgot.

    patoct@yahoo.com

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  10. "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." Wayne Gretzky

    bn100candg at hotmail dot com

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  11. There are some great quotes on your list, Danielle ;) One of my favorites, is "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest," Paul Simon.

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  12. One of my favorites is from Princess Diana. "I don't go by the rule book...I lead from the heart, not the head." She was a fabulous lady.

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  13. forgot to put my email.

    Sheryll1974@netscape.net

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  14. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero, but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. G. K. Chesterton

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  15. Great quotes! My favorite is from Chief Dan George as Old Lodge Skins in Little Big Man. "Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn't."

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  16. I don't know if you'd consider it a quote or not but my. Mother used many saying as I was growing up and I think my favorite has always been this one "Don't lower yourself to his/her level". I don't think it needs an explanation.

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  17. Two of my favorites:

    A room without books is like a body without a soul. -Cicero

    The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. -Jane Austen

    azdeiter@yahoo.com

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  18. Loving all of these quotes in the comments! Thanks for stopping by everyone :)

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  19. Oscar Wilde has many... :) I like the one where he says that children start by worshipping their parents, then hating them and loving them again... So true. :)

    Mae West has some great ones too. :)

    maybe31 at yahoo.com

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  20. I love quotes, especially about books and reading. I confess to having a Pinterest page devoted to sayings about books. Here is a favorite saying, by a favorite author:
    “Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”
    ― Robert A. Heinlein

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  21. Forgot email: Barbed1951 at aol dot com

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  22. A favorite one I just saw was "across time and space, new worlds, a book is a real life TARDIS!"
    lattebooks at hotmail dot com

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  23. I love all these book quotes, especially the Beauty and the Beast one! I don't tend to remember quotes from books and only some from movies, often silly ones, which are the ones I tend to use. This includes such quotes as "Have fun storming the Castle," from The Princess Bride and "Remember where we parked," from Star Trek IV.
    jmcgaugh (at) semo (dot) edu

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  24. I love reading quotes -- and I can relate to most. But remembering any of them is not a strong point for me.
    But this I remember (altho sometimes not word for word, but the gist, the meaning of it):
    Jeremiah 29:11 -- - 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'
    donna(dot)durnell(at)sbcglobal(dot)net

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  25. A dream is a wish your heart makes......when you're fast asleep.....

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  26. I tend to collect quotes...finding them again can sometimes be the challenge, lol. I liked this one from one of Thea Harrison's stories:

    “I don’t want you to curb yourself, deny yourself, cover up your face or head or any part of your body. I don’t want you to lose or gain weight, or watch what you say, or deny how you feel, or try to be anything but who you are, because who you are is the most beautiful person in the world to me’.

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  27. Sorry, forgot the e-address:

    elewkf1 at yahoo dot com

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  28. Our winner are

    Victoria Roberts

    arizonadutt

    I'll contact you both shortly!

    Happy Holidays,
    Danielle

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  29. What goes around, comes around. So be a nice person - LOL.

    Karen T.

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