World Book Day: 85 quotes on the joy of books and reading!

April 23 is designated by UNESCO as World Book Day, a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and marked in over 100 countries across the world. Each year, UNESCO selects the World Book Capital for a one-year period, effective 23 April onwards (Incheon, South Korea is the choice this year).

In this compilation in alphabetical order, we present you 85 quotes from around the world, on the joy and importance of books and reading! Go treat yourself to a new book of your choice, and gift one to a dear friend as well. If startups are your cup of tea, check out YourStory’s pick of Top 10 books for entrepreneurs from 2014, 2013 and 2012!

A book is a device to ignite the imagination. - Alan Bennett

A book is a dream that you hold in your hand. – Neil Gaiman

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. - Edward P. Morgan

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul. - Franz Kafka

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking. - Jerry Seinfield

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

A good book has no ending. - R.D. Cumming

A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit. - John Milton

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading. - William Styron

A house without books is like a room without windows. - Heinrich Mann

A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge. - George R.R. Martin

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

A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it. - Samuel Johnson

Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. - P. J. O'Rourke

Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you'll die of a misprint. - Markus Herz

Books - the best antidote against the marsh-gas of boredom and vacuity. - George Steiner

Books are a uniquely portable magic. - Stephen King

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time. - E.P. Whipple

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

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind. - James Russell Lowell

Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life. - Jesse Lee Bennett

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home. - Anna Quindlen

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

Books had instant replay long before televised sports. - Bern Williams

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own. - William Hazlitt

Books were my pass to personal freedom. - Oprah Winfrey

Children are made readers on the laps of their parents. - Emilie Buchwald

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. - W. B. Yeats

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures. - Jessamyn West

Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one. - Augustine Birrell

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Mark Twain

Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes. - John LeCarre

I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book. - Groucho Marx

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. - Jorge Luis Borges

I was born with a reading list I will never finish. - Maud Casey

I’ve never known any trouble that an hour’s reading didn’t assuage. - Charles de Secondat

If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. - Toni Morrison

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. - Haruki Murakami

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done. - Steven Wright

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. - Mortimer J. Adler

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. - Oscar Wilde

It often requires more courage to read some books than it does to fight a battle. - Sutton Elbert Griggs

My best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read. - Abraham Lincoln

My test of a good novel is dreading to begin the last chapter. - Thomas Helm

Never judge a book by its movie. - J.W. Eagan

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me. - Anatole France

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. - Confucius

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

No person who can read is ever successful at cleaning out an attic. - Ann Landers

Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. - Harry S. Truman

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. - Frederick Douglass

One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind. - Ishmael Reed

Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere. - Mary Schmich

Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape. - Nora Ephron

Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. - Joseph Addison

Reading means borrowing. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Reading takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere. - Hazel Rochman

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you. - Harold Bloom

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. - Edmund Burke

So many books, so little time. - Frank Zappa

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. - Francis Bacon

The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most. - Theodore Parker

The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. - Oliver Goldsmith

The greatest gift is a passion for reading. - Elizabeth Hardwick

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

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read. - Mark Twain

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. - Dr. Seuss

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. - Jane Austen

The wise man reads both books and life itself. - Lin Yutang

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. - Saint Augustine

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. - Clarence Shepard Day

There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all. - Jacqueline Kennedy

There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing. - Isaac D'Israeli

There is no friend as loyal as a book. - Ernest Hemingway

There's so much more to a book than just the reading. - Maurice Sendak

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum. - Elbert Hubbard

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. - Somerset Maugham

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark. - Victor Hugo

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader. - Margaret Fuller

What is reading but silent conversation? - Walter Savage Landor

When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. - Christopher Morley

Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light. –Vera Nazarian

You cannot open a book without learning something. - Confucius

You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend. - Paul Sweeney