Voltaire

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.

Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must lay it down and commence living on its hint… What I began by reading I must finish by acting.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

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

An autobiography is not about pictures; it’s about the stories; it’s about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people’s privacy.

As a child I used to read Gone with the Wind over and over again. I wanted to be Scarlett O’Hara. I never wanted to believe that it was possible that there could be infidelity. I never wanted to be believe that it was even possible for a man to look another way, even for a moment. My bubble of monogamy was pierced in a harsh way.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution – such call I good books.