'What's more delightful than an evening beside the fire with a nice bright lamp and a book, listening to the wind beating against the windows?' 'How true!' she said, her great dark eyes fixed widely on him. 'I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times,' he said. 'The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of -- I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters -- I live and breathe with them.'

My God is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, of Beranger! My credo is the credo of Rousseau! I adhere to the immortal principles of '89! I have no …

Noble characters and pure affections and happy scenes are very comforting things. They're a refuge from life's disillusionments.

So from now on the days were going to continue one after the other like this, always the same, innumerable, bringing nothing! . . . It was God's will. The futu…

In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of o…

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main... and best of all, you can enjoy these …

Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.