After a cool and wet spring in much of eastern North America, last week we finally started those lazy, hazy days of summer. Relaxing in a shady spot or sandy beach with a good book sounds pretty good. Since I am an avid reader, and I have just finished writing another book, here are some of my favorite nuggets on one of my favorite pastimes.

“A room without books is as a body without a soul.”
Cicero, Roman statesman, orator, and writer

“He was going to write a book… but then he found out you can buy them for $19.95.”
Unknown

“Your library is your portrait.”
George Holbrook Jackson, British journalist, writer and publisher

“I have sometimes dreamt that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesman come to receive their rewards, the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without certain envy, when he sees us coming with books under our arms, ‘Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.’”
Virginia Woolf, English novelist, critic, and essayist

“Employ your time in improving yourself by others’ writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.”
Socrates, Classical Greek philosopher

“A best seller was a book which somehow sold well simply because it was selling well.”
Daniel J(oseph) Boorstin, American historian, professor, attorney, and writer

“When you read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before.”
Clifton Paul Fadiman, American writer, editor