As we ply our writing trade today, let us take heart and inspiration from the words of book addicts and adorers down the ages:

“Books, the children of the brain.”    Jonathan Swift

“Worthy books are not companions — they are solitudes: We lose ourselves in them and all our cares.”    Philip James Bailey.

“To do its work, a book needs only the energy of a human spirit.”   Daniel Boorstin

“Books are both our luxuries and our daily bread.”    Henry Stevens

“Wear the old coat and buy the new book.”   Austin Phelps

“A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.”   Samuel Johnson

“Give me books, fruit, french wine, and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by somebody I do not know.”    John Keats

“It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.”    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

“Nature fits her children with something to do,
he who would write and can’t write, can surely review.”    James Russell Lowell

“The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid,
reliable business.”   John Steinbeck

“A book is an axe to the frozen sea around us.”    Franz Kafka

“Even when all other forms of communication fail, books will remain.”   George Brockway

“Read at whim! Read at whim!    Randall Jarrell

And now, enlivened and enthused, let’s all write on!