Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Books are to me as homemade tattoos are to an inmate. Can't get enough of them.

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.

If people don't read, that's their choice; a lifelong book habit may itself be some sort of affliction.

The true felicity of a lover of books is the luxurious turning of page by page, the surrender, not meanly abject, but deliberate and cautious, with your wits about you, as you deliver yourself into the keeping of the book. This I call reading.

Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.

Do you know what they call people who hoard books? Smart.

Great is bookishness and the charm of books.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

. . . finally, I couldn't imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince. . . .

Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

The books you love best - those are the immensity of the sea.

I am simply a book drunkard.

Of all things I liked books best. My father had a large library and whenever I could manage I tried to satisfy my passion for reading.

My books kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon.

There are 10,000 books in my library, and it will keep growing until I die. This has exasperated my daughters, amused my friends and baffled my accountant. If I had not picked up this habit in the library long ago, I would have more money in the bank today; I would not be richer.

We live for books.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.

[When] he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy...Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes.

I'd much prefer my books to shoes...In the summer I sometimes take walks without shoes but never without a novel.

Books are, let's face it, better than everything else.

Of all things I liked books best.

We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.

I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.