19 Quotes That Will Make You Fall in Love With Books All Over Again

Bust out those e-readers, dust off your bookshelves, or head to your local library ― Monday, March 3 marks the 17th annual.
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Bust out those e-readers, dust off your bookshelves, or head to your local library -- Monday, March 3 marks the 17th annual Read Across America Day. Hosted by the National Education Association and held in conjunction with Dr. Seuss' birthday (March 2), Read Across America Day applies the football pep rally mentality to books, aiming to get children just as excited about cracking open a book as they are about scoring a touchdown.

In honor of Read Across America Day -- and just because we love books -- we've rounded up the best quotes about reading. These 19 quotes express the undeniably unique power books possess to entertain us, comfort us, challenge us, and inspire us. Reading is truly amazing, and while it's always in the back of our minds, sometimes life's distractions get in the way of hunkering down with a large cup of coffee and a really great book. Let these quotes serve as your reminder. And, because it's only fitting, we'll start with a quote from Dr. Seuss himself!

"A book is a device to ignite the imagination." ― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead." -- Clarence Shepard Day

reading book

"Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home." ― Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers." -- Charles William Eliot

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was." - Ernest Hemingway

"I read my eyes out and can't read half enough... The more one reads the more one sees we have to read." - John Adams

"Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated: by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed." - Joseph Addison

reading book

"A book, too, can be a star, 'explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,' a
living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe." - Madeleine L'Engle

"If the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all." - François Fénelon

"A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing. If you read it when you are recovering from an illness, and return to it years after, it is changed surely, with the change in yourself." -
Andrew Lang

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"The love of books is a love which requires neither justification, apology, nor defense." - J.A. Langford

"The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one." - Oliver Goldsmith

"No matter what his rank or position may be, the lover of books is the richest and the happiest of the children of men." - J.A. Langford

"The habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will last you until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live." - Anthony Trollope

reading book

"A first book has some of the sweetness of a first love." - Robert Aris Willmott

"Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book." ― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

"No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting." - Lady M. W. Montagu

"Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books." - Thomas Carlyle

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