Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
The worth of a book is what you can carry away from it.
The great books beckon us to a road upward.
A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.