Reading is one of my favorite pastimes, and for years I’ve collected quotes about reading and books that rang true for me. Here are a few:

“And indeed, what is better than to sit by one’s fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?”
~ Gustave Flaubert

“…and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“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.”
~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”
~ Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
~ Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
~ Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature

“The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.”
~ Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Dec. 15

“Far from being an escape from reality, good literature is a window into reality.”
~ Gladys Hunt, Honey for a Woman’s Heart

Which of these resonates with you? Do you have any other good quotes about books or reading?

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)