Oh for a book and a shady nook...

Or a book and a comfortable chair, cozy blanket, and warm fire...but that doesn't rhyme.  We love books.  We love to read books, we love to buy books, and we love to browse through books at bookstores, the library, or online. Anyone who helped us move knows that we like books--we don't even have enough bookshelf space for all of them.  We think maybe we should get rid of a few, but which ones?  So we keep them all.   Neither Russ or I will ever be e-reader or kindle people.  We both like the smell and feel of a book in our hands.  We sometimes wonder if we are strange in our compulsion to buy books and line our bookshelves.  But then I found some of these quotes and realized we are not as strange as I thought.  Maybe some of you can identify with some of them.  


 Where is human nature so weak as in a bookstore?

 - Henry Ward Beecher

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.

 - Austin Phelps

Oh for a book and a shady nook…
  - John Wilson (1785 – 1854)
 

Do give books – religious or otherwise – for Christmas. They’re never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal.   - Lenore Hershey 

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. - Anna Quindlen    

 

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
  - Sir Richard Steele

“TV.” If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they’ll have with twenty-six. Open your child’s imagination. Open a book.
  - Author Unknown

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.  - Henry Ward Beecher

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
  - Mark Twain

The function of a good book is to stand like a signpost guiding the reader to the Truth and the Life.
  - A.W. Tozer

Book lovers will understand me, and they will know too that part of the pleasure of a library lies in its very existence.
  - Jan Morris

Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one."

 - Augustine Birrell

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
  - Cicero

No furniture so charming as books.
  - Rev. Sydney Smith

Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are is true enough, but I’d know you better if you told me what you reread.
  - François Mauriac

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.
  - Desiderius Erasmus

God be thanked for books! they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
  - W.E. Channing

A blessed companion is a book – a book that, fitly chosen, is a lifelong friend… a book that, at a touch, pours its heart into our own.
  - Douglas Jerrold

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counsellor, a multitude of counsellors.
  - Henry Ward Beecher 

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be -
I had a mother who read to me.
  - Strickland Gillilan