Taylor, Bayard. "Not many, but good books."
Thoreau. "Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand."
Trollope, Anthony. "The habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade."
Waller, Sir William. "In my study I am sure to converse with none but wise men; but abroad, it is impossible for me to avoid the society of fools."
Whateley, Richard. "If, in reading books, a man does not choose wisely, at any rate he has the chance offered him of doing so."
Whipple, Edwin P. "Books,—lighthouses erected in the sea of time."
White, Andrew D., President of Cornell, speaking of Scott, says: "Never was there a more healthful and health-ministering literature than that which he gave to the world. To go back to it from Flaubert and Daudet and Tolstoi is like listening to the song of the lark after the shrieking passion of the midnight pianoforte; nay, it is like coming out of the glare and heat and reeking vapor of a palace ball into a grove in the first light and music and breezes of the morning.... So far from stimulating an unhealthy taste, the enjoyment of this fiction created distinctly a taste for what is usually called 'solid reading,' and especially a love for that historical reading and study which has been a leading inspiration and solace of a busy life."
Whitman, Walt. "For us, along the great highways of time, those monuments stand,—those forms of majesty and beauty. For us those beacons burn through all the night."
Wolseley, Gen. Lord. "During the mutiny and China war I carried a Testament, two volumes of Shakspeare that contained his best plays; and since then, when in the field, I have always carried a Book of Common Prayer, Thomas à Kempis, Soldier's Pocket Book, depending on a well-organized postal service to supply me weekly with plenty of newspapers."
Wordsworth. "These hoards of wealth you can unlock at will."