John Ruskin Quotes

I think that if you really love a book, there's nothing nicer than to have a first edition of it.

Buying books was a way anyone could acquire a work of art for very little.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Also, if nothing else, writing this book has really changed the way I experience bookstores. I have a whole different appreciation for the amount of work packed into even the slimmest volume on the shelves.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.

People - me included - want to get excited about books. Good books are a good thing.

When a new book is published, read an old one.

I don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not a bibliophile in that word's natural sense.

There is no denying the aesthetics of a well-made, well-loved book.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

I do like having books on my shelves. I do value that life.

People who grew up on my books are now able to get the point across to others that they're worth reading.

I prefer to talk about the gift of literature rather than its role or task.

Every so often I take out a volume and read a page or two. After all, reading is looking after in a manner of speaking. Though they're not old enough to be valuable for their age alone, nor important enough to be sought after by collectors, my charges are dear to me, even if, as often as not, they are as dull on the inside as on the outside. No matter how banal the contents, there is always something that touches me. For someone now dead once thought these words significant enough to write them down.

The very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it.

The good of a book lies in its being read.

Most scholarly books we read for the information or insight they contain. But some we return to simply for the pleasure of the author's company.

I know that for every reader who has lost the habit or can't find the time, there are people who've never enjoyed reading and question the value of literature, either as entertainment or education, or believe that a love of books, and of fiction in particular, is sentimental or frivolous.

Hardcover and paperback forever. Someone carve that into a tree.

The one constant in my life has been my love of books: reading them, thinking about them, talking about them, holding them, turning people on to new ones.

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.

I have spent more time with other people's books than with my own. I do not regret it.

I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.

When someone says to me, 'I love your book - I read it in a day,' I want to tell them to go back and read it again.

Of course there is no denying the possible pleasure of holing up with a fat, slow-moving, mediocre novel; still, we all know that we can indulge ourselves in that fashion only so much. In the end, we read not for reading's sake, but to learn.