Natalie Clifford Barney Quotes

A good book is always on tap; it may be decanted and drunk a hundred times, and it is still there for further imbibement.

A lot of religious texts make for good reading. That's why they hold up.

It is a relief to read some true book, wherein all are equally dead,--equally alive. I think the best parts of Shakespeare would only be enhanced by the most thrilling and affecting events. I have found it so. And so much the more, as they are not intended for consolation.

What I really mean is that a great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.

A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Not every book has to be loaded with symbolism, irony, or musical language, but it seems to me that every book-at least every one worth reading-is about something.

My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is me judice, no book,—it is a plaything.

I think I write in order to discover on my shelf a new book that I would enjoy reading, or to see a new play that would engross me.

The virtue of books is to be readable.

A good book ... leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?

Books, books, books in all their aspects, in form and spirit, their physical selves and what reading releases from their hieroglyphic pages, in their sight and smell, in their touch and feel to the questing hand, and in the intellectual music which they sing to the thoughtful brain and loving heart, books are to me the best of all symbols, the realest of all reality.

It is with a good book as it is with good company.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

Ideally, we should like to define a good book as one which 'permits, invites, or compels' good reading

I always try to treat the book itself as the artwork. I don't want you to stop while you're reading one of my books and say, 'Oh! What a gorgeous illustration!' I want you to stop at the end of the book and say, 'This is a good book.

Books take their place according to their specific gravity as surely as potatoes in a tub.

Good books are for consideration after, too.

A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get.

Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.

There never yet have been, nor are there now, too many good books.