86 Bookshelf Quotes

Following is our list of bookshelf quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about shelves.

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Famous Bookshelf Quotes

A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot. — Alan Bennett

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf. — Justin Cronin

Never trust anyone whose TV is bigger than their book shelf — Emilia Clarke

Decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. — Anna Quindlen

A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him — Walter Mosley

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait. — Anatole Broyard

So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall. — Roald Dahl

Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person’s bookcase and their grocery cart, she’d pretty much know who they were. — Louise Penny

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

A bookshop is powder-magazine, a dynamite-shed, a drugstore of poisons, a bar of intoxicants, a den of opiates, an island of sirens. — John Cowper Powys

A library is infinity under a roof. — Gail Carson Levine

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors. — Charles Baudelaire

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors. — Henry Ward Beecher

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. — Gilbert Highet

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books - even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome. — William E. Gladstone

Short Bookshelf Quotes

  • Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes. — Jamie Zawinski
  • I have a nice bookshelf in my office, but not my house. I'm crass, but not that crass. — Jerry Seinfeld
  • If the Bible is what it claims to be, how can we allow it to remain on a bookshelf? — Steven J Lawson
  • The books housed in one's first adult bookshelf are the geological bed of who we wish to become — Sheridan Hay
  • Every time I get mad, I grab my hammer and make a bookshelf or something. — Anthony Mackie
  • On the bookshelf of life, God is a useful work of reference, always at hand but seldom consulted. — Dag Hammarskjold

Bookcase Quotes

A deserted library in the morning - there's something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting peacefully. — Haruki Murakami

I was always going to the bookcase for another sip of the divine specific. — Virginia Woolf

A bookcase is as good as a view, as much of a panorama as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms and zephyrs. — Anatole Broyard

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases. — Mark Twain

My brother and I were able to fantasize far more extravagantly about our parents' tastes and desires, their aspirations and their vices, by scanning their bookcases than by snooping in their closest. Their selves were on their shelves. — Anne Fadiman

Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice. — Anton Chekhov

The Pulitzer has nothing to do with me; it's more about people's perceptions of me, whatever they may be. I'm not being humble - I honestly do not and cannot think about that. It's a lovely piece of crystal on my bookcase, but that's all it is to me. — David Lindsay-Abaire

Let your bookcases and your shelves be your gardens and your pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. — Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon

The book must of necessity be put into a bookcase. And the bookcase must be housed. And the house must be kept. And the library must be dusted, must be arranged, must be catalogued. What a vista of toil, yet not unhappy toil! — William E. Gladstone

Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where/ Latin ashes and the dust of Greece/ mingled with novels, history, and verse/ in one dark Babel. I was folio-high/ when I first heard the voices. — Charles Baudelaire

Shelves Quotes

No printed word, nor spoken plea can teach young minds what they should be. Not all the books on all the shelves - but what the teachers are themselves. — Rudyard Kipling

Penicillin sat on a shelf for ten years while I was called a quack. - Alexander Fleming

Penicillin sat on a shelf for ten years while I was called a quack. — Alexander Fleming

I get lots of awards for being mentally ill. Apparently, I am better at being mentally ill than almost anything else I've ever done. Seriously - I have a shelf of awards for being bipolar. — Carrie Fisher

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. — Henry Miller

A modern librarian, who has faith in the law that 'BOOKS ARE FOR USE,' is happy only when his readers make his shelves constantly empty. It is not the books that go out that worry him. It is the stay-at-home volumes that perplex and depress him. — S. R. Ranganathan

So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf, Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves. — Ogden Nash

I'd never heard of the 'Lord of the Rings', actually. So I went to the bookstore and there it was, three shelves of books about Tolkien and Middle-earth, and I was like, 'Holy cow, what else am I missing out on?' — Sean Astin

In no way am I demeaning writing or any other form of art because it's popular. What I'm saying is that anything fed into the industrial machinery to comply with rules of size and length and shelf-life has a hard time surviving as art. — Alberto Manguel

I'm not interested in creating a book that is read once and then placed on the shelf and forgotten. I am very happy when people have worn out my books, or that they're held together by Scotch tape. — Richard Scarry

Tailor your space to your needs. In one closet, I have upper and lower rods for skirts, pants and tops. The second is all shelves for bags and linens. In the third, there's just one rod for suits and dresses. To hang evening gowns, I use hooks on the ceiling. — Thelma Golden

People Writing About Bookshelf

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Read quotes by Henry Ward Beecher

Henry Ward Beecher

889 5661
Read quotes by Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett
quotes on life, education and world

99 575
Read quotes by Justin Cronin

Justin Cronin
quotes on love, religion and education

52 42
Read quotes by Emilia Clarke

Emilia Clarke
quotes on love, life and dragons

31 406
Read quotes by Anna Quindlen

Anna Quindlen
quotes on books

384 1544
Read quotes by Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley
quotes on love, leadership and life

84 355

More Bookshelf Quotes

Love After Love all your life, whom you have ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. — Derek Walcott

You could eat sushi off my bookshelf. My cleaning regime is like a battleground. I'm Genghis Khan and my cleaning products are my Mongolian army and I take no prisoners. The rest of my life is an experiment in chaos so I like to keep my flat neat. — Ryan Adams

In this time of the Internet and nonfiction, to be on an actual bookshelf in an actual bookstore is exciting in itself. — Chris Abani

Neel takes a sharp breath and I know exactly what it means. It means: I have waited my whole life to walk through a secret passage built into a bookshelf. — Robin Sloan

A framed photo on a dusty bookshelf caught his attention; he moved closer and picked it up silently. A small girl with long blond hair was standing under a tree, her face tilted up in delight as its feathery leaves brushed across her face, framing it. A willow tree. Willow. — L.A. Weatherly

You ever buy a book and not read it? You feel almost guilty having it up on a bookshelf. People are like, "Hey, how's that book?" "I haven't read it." "Oh, did you just buy it?" "I've had it since high school." "Well, can I borrow it?" "No." — Jim Gaffigan

The bookshelf, like the book, has become an integral part of civilization as we know it, its presence in a home practically defining what it means to be civilized, educated, and refined. — Henry Petroski

If on a friend’s bookshelf You cannot find Joyce or Sterne Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton, You are in danger, face the fact, So kick him first or punch him hard And from him hide behind a curtain. — Alexander Theroux

A little more than a hundred years ago, "Tel Aviv" was not a city. It was a title of a novel written by an author. The "Return to Zion" was a name of another novel. There was a bookshelf. There was no country. There was no state. There was no nation. There was no physical Jewish reality in this country. — Amos Oz

The Dick, Jane, and Spot primers have gone to that bookshelf in the sky. I have, in some ways, a tender feeling toward them, so I think it's for the best. — Chris Van Allsburg

Our cities need to change, fast. Tactical Urbanism is a guided tour of solutions created when local people decide they can't wait for politics to catch up before they improve their neighborhoods. This weathervane book deserves a place on any urbanist's bookshelf. — Alex Steffen

I would stay at my grandma's house on my birthday every year and I remember she had a bookshelf of murder mystery books along with really frightening books, like one on Jack the Ripper. She also had a poster of a shark in the closet which also terrified me at the time. — Christopher Bollen

I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading. — Barbara Pym

Love After Love The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. — Derek Walcott

The rules have changed. True power is held by the person who possesses the largest bookshelf, not gun cabinet or wallet. — Anthony J. D'Angelo

Right up to the middle of this century all perceptions of the world around us were delivered via the bookshelf or the paper route. — Theodore Bikel

Genre categorization is a capitalist (rather than artistic) thing, a symptom of marketing and major-chain bookshelf placement. — Lee Klein

I have Margaery Tyrell's - I didn't take it, I was given it - but yes, David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] gave me Margaery Tyrell's wedding crown. So that is sitting on my bookshelf. — Natalie Dormer

In design-speak, 'a library' means a room lined with books, floor-to ceiling, but it all depends on the space you have. You may have a free-standing bookshelf of your favorite books if that's all you have room for. — Nate Berkus

I source images and ideas from different parts of my experiences, and sometimes they are things that are made-up, or just appear out of nowhere, like out of a dream or an image that I've seen in a book, or even the title of a book that I'm staring at on a shelf. It's a good way to write songs, just stare at a bookshelf! — Julia Stone

We have a generation of kids who may never see a bookshelf or never see books in houses. What are they going to think about books? How will books become meaningful in their lives except as yet another form of digitalized content? A book is not just digitalized content. — Jeanette Winterson

There's no division on my bookshelf between fiction and nonfiction. As far as I'm concerned, fiction is about the truth. — Arundhati Roy

Brad got me this great thing for Christmas. It's a bookshelf that has a book on every religion. That's how we plan to raise our kids. Teach them about all religions. They can pick one or be a student of all of them. We'll celebrate Kwanzaa for our girl. We'll celebrate moon and water festivals for our boys. We'll take them to temples in certain countries. Also to church. — Angelina Jolie

When I was 7, my proudest possession would have been my bookshelf - 'cause I'd alphabetized all of the books on my bookshelf. — Neil Gaiman

My mom didn't write, but she loved to read. She liked books 'that made you a little nervous.' Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub were the three wise men of our family bookshelf. — Michael Easton

I remembered standing in the middle of the street in front of The Crooked Bookshelf, filled with the certainty of a future. I had heard the wolves howling behind the house and remembered how glad I had been to be human. — Maggie Stiefvater

My father always says, ‘Never trust anyone who has a TV bigger than their bookshelf.’ So I make sure I read. Back at home, I just put up a massive bookcase and asked everyone I know and love to help me fill it with their favorite books. It’s been quite nice because I’ve learned a lot about my friends and family from what they’ve been giving me. A book says a lot about a person. — Emilia Clarke

I don't choose between my house phone and my mobile. I don't choose between my laptop and my notebook. And I don't intend to choose between my e-reader and my bookshelf. — Sara Sheridan

Adrienne Mayor's inquiry into the myth--and surprising reality--of Amazon women begins with the fierce Greek huntress Atalanta, but takes us deep into the past and as far afield as the Great Wall of China. With the restless curiosity and meticulous scholarship that have become her hallmark, the author once again has found a gap in my bookshelf and filled it, admirably. — Steven Saylor

You know what the best kind of organic certification would be? Make an unannounced visit to a farm and take a good long look at the farmer’s bookshelf. Because what you’re feeding your emotions and thoughts is what this is really all about. The way I produce a chicken is an extension of my worldview. You can learn more about that by seeing what’s sitting on my bookshelf than having me fill out a whole bunch of forms. — Joel Salatin

For proponents of ecosystem-based management,the good news is that another new book, Ecosystem-based Management for the Oceans, conveys the topic at its state-of-the-art level of development...both Marine Ecosystems and Global Change and Ecosystem-based Management for the Oceans are valuable troves that could profitably be mined, and any academic bookshelf would wear them well. — Carl Safina

[T]hat I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf--felt akin to an instance of religious grace. — Jonathan Franzen

Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my subtenant. “You’re my sacred ones,” I told the books. “No one but me still cares about you. But I’m going to keep you with me forever. And one day I’ll make you important again.” I thought about that terrible calumny of the new generation: that books smell. — Gary Shteyngart

You can read minds, and you didn't tell me?” Link stared at me like he just found out I was the Silver Surfer. He rubbed his head nervously. “Hey, man, all that stuff about Lena? I was yankin’ your chain.” He looked away. “Are you doin’ it now? You're doin’ it, aren't you? Dude, get out of my head.” He backed away from me and into the bookshelf. “I can't read your mind, you idiot. — Kami Garcia

The row of dolls watched her impassively from the bookshelf, their tea party propriety almost certainly offended. — Holly Black

His eyes gravitated towards the wall-to-wall bookshelf at one end of the room. 'You folks like books, I see. — Regina Doman

There weren't any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees. — Haruki Murakami

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