Joseph Campbell Quotes

I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter.

It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can.

Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age.

I cannot sit and think; books think for me.

I'm confused, and brilliant books help me to be less so.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.

If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads.

Yes! the books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill! The only years of my life that I can look back on with something like pride... Early and late, through the long winter nights and the quiet summer days, I drank at the fountain of knowledge, and never wearied of the draught.

Books are health food for your brain and dessert for your soul. Books are one of the few proven sources of mental exercise known to man. Reading is a workout for your mind. If your body needs thirty minutes of exercise a day, so does your thinker.

Books come at my call and return when I desire them; they are never out of humor and they answer all my questions with readiness. Some present in review before me the events of past ages; others reveal to me the secrets of Nature. These teach me how to live, and those how to die; these dispel my melancholy by their mirth, and amuse me by their sallies of wit. Some there are who prepare my soul to suffer everything, to desire nothing, and to become thoroughly acquainted with itself. In a word, they open the door to all the arts and sciences.

A book is quite a beautiful thing, even more so learning. Together, however, all they amount to is called book-learning.

Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary. We must not permit anything to stand between us and the book that could change our lives.

Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city.

Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.

The library furnished our dreams, helped us shape our ambitions, made up people of books and ideas and grand designs.

Books fall open, you fall in. When you climb out again, you're a bit larger than you used to be.

There are essentially two things that will make you wise -- the books you read and the people you meet.

Books are but stepping stones to show you where other minds have been.

Good books are as friends, willing to give to us if we are willing to make a little effort.

Anything worth anything can be found in books.

I've always liked libraries. They're quiet and full of books and full of knowledge.

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.

Every book is good to read which sets the reader in a working mood.

Books are what you step on to take you to a higher shelf. The higher your stack of books, the higher the shelf you can reach. Want to reach higher? Stack some more books under your feet! Reading is what brings us to new knowledge. It opens new doors. It helps us understand mysteries. It lets us hear from successful people. Reading is what takes us down the road in our journey. Everything you need for a better future and success has already been written.