About Books

These quotations appeared in my e-mail this morning. Since I tend to give books as gifts (and many of the best gifts I've ever received were books), it's a good time to think about them.


A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
— Italo Calvino

When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than was there before.
— Clifton Fadiman

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.
— C.S. Lewis

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

Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
— John Witherspoon

Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of the day makes that day happier.
— Kathleen Norris