1120 – “She Did Not Need Much”, a poem by Starra Neely Blade

She did not need much,
wanted very little.
A kind word, sincerity,
fresh air, clean water,
a garden, kisses,
books to read,
sheltering arms, a cosy bed,
and to love and be loved in return.

-Starra Neely Blade

972 – “The question is are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?”

-David Attenbrough

814 – Jane Smiley on Books

“An inexpensive paperback book from a reputable publisher is a small, rectangular, boxlike object a few inches long, a few inches wide, and an inch or so thick. It is easy to stack and store, easy to buy, keep give away, or throw away. As an object, it is user-friendly and routine, a mature technological form, hard to improve upon and easy to like. Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”

–Jane Smiley

788 – “Ad Graecas literas totum animum applicui; statimque ut pecuniam accepero, Graecos primum autores, deinde vestes emam.”

Translation: “I have turned my entire attention to Greek. The first thing I shall do, as soon as the money arrives, is to buy some Greek authors; after that, I shall buy clothes.”

Common Paraphrase: “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”

–Desiderius Erasmus

741 – “A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”

–Tyrion Lannister in George R R Martin’s A Game of Thrones

700 – “Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it’s much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!”

–Neil Gaiman

663 – Will Durant on Living History

“It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time. You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography; you are what you are because of what you have been; because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations; because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read, every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul. So with a city, a country, and a race; it is its past, and cannot be understood without it.”

–Henry Steele Commager

608 – “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”

–Charles W Eliot

604 – “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”

–William Somerset Maugham

564 – “Books to the ceiling, books to the sky, my pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I’ll have a long beard by time I read them.”

–Arnold Lobel