February 25, 2026

Bookish Quotes

 


Vilma Reading On A Sofa
Tavik Frantisek Simon

If someone said to me,
how did you spend your life?
I'd have to say,
lying on the sofa reading.
~ Fran Lebowitz

Sunlight and Shadow
Winslow Homer

A day out-of-doors, 
someone I loved to talk with,
a good book and some simple food 
and music—that would be rest.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Rest
Deborah DeWit

In the case of good books, 
the point is not to see how many
of them you can get through, 
but rather how many can get through to you.
~ Mortimer J. Adler

The Garden Window
Daniel F. Gerhartz

We read books to find out who we are.
What other people, real or imaginary, 
do and think and feel. . . 
is an essential guide to our understanding 
of what we ourselves are and may become. 
~ Ursula K. Le Guin

A Woman Reading
Camille Corot

Her eye, her ear, were tuning forks, burning glasses,
which caught the minutest refraction
 or echo of a thought or feeling. . . . 
She heard a deeper vibration, 
a kind of composite echo, 
of all that the writer said, 
and did not say. 
~ Willa Cather

A Girl Reading
Jessie Willcox-Smith

Oh! For a book, and a cozy nook
And oh! For a quiet hour,
When care and strife and worry of life,
Have lost their dreaded power,
When you read with zest the very best
That mind to mind can give,
And quaff your joy without alloy,
And feel it is good to live.
~ Anonymous

Madame Claude Monet Reading
Pierre Auguste Renoir

God forbid that any book
should be banned. The
practice is as indefensible as
infanticide.
~ Rebecca West

Friday Nights
Deborah DeWit

The pleasure of all reading
is doubled when one lives
with another who shares the
same books.
~ Katherine Mansfield

Woman Reading
Yamashita Shintaro

Books are the carriers
of civilization. Without
books, history is silent,
literature dumb, science
crippled, thought and
speculation at a standstill.
They are engines of
change, windows on the
world, (as a poet said)
lighthouses erected in the
sea of time. They are
companions, teachers,
magicians, bankers of the
treasures of the mind.
Books are humanity
in print.
~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Orchard Window
Daniel Garber

Just the knowledge 
that a good book is awaiting one
at the end of a long day
makes that day happier.
~ Kathleen Norris

The New Novel
Winslow Homer

14 comments:

  1. I love that Barbara Tuchman quote. Books do some heavy lifting in our universe!

    Beautiful post, Les!

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    1. Thanks, Deb. I have a reading journal where I can record my favorite quotations. It was fun to compose this post. Yes, that Tuchman quote is great!

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  2. Great quotes! Loved them and the pictures. Thinking of you and your Mom. Give her a hug from me. :-)

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    1. Thanks, Kay! Some of these pictures came from Nan's blog many, many years ago.

      Thanks, also, for the good thoughts for my mom (and me). xo

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  3. Great collection, but I wish you had included artist names and picture titles! I have seen quite a few of those, but can’t bring to mind which artists painted them.

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    1. Oh, Mae! I meant to do that, but was in a hurry. My mom fell last week and broke her hip. She had to have a partial hip replacement, and after a week in the hospital, she was moved to a rehab facility. I've been quite distracted. Will edit this post now. Thanks.

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  4. I see you mentioned Nan in your comment to Kay above! I was going to say how much this made me think of Nan. I miss her.

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    1. Kay G, I miss her too. Very much so.

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  5. Hope your Mom is better!

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    1. Thanks for this, Kay G. She is improving every day. Looks like she might come home on Friday!

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  6. What an absolutely gorgeous post. The images are perfect as are the quotes--some I recognize and others are new to me. Thanks so much for sharing this.

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    1. Aw, thank you, Jane. I had fun finding the images to go along with my favorite quotes.

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  7. First I scrolled through the artwork then looked at the quotes. Great post. A letter to you (my first with the new pen) and a card for your mom in transit. Let me know when a good time from The Likeness if you still want to do that. You have your hands full!

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    1. Thanks, Tina. Looking forward to my snail mail! Thanks. I need to get a copy of The Likeness from the library, so bear with me. Maybe mid-March??

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