![]() ![]() As he sat now, his white wig falling in lovelocks about his face, he drummed with taper fingers upon the little round stand beside him, where a musty volume lay at his elbow. He had been glad to find a place where he might live the life of a recluse among his books. He was a tall old man, bowed with a scholar's stoop, and never seen without his silver-rimmed spectacles. ~Virginia Woolf, "The Leaning Tower," 1940 To breed the kind of butterfly a writer is you must let him sun himself for three or four years at university. A boy brought up alone in a library turns into a book worm brought up alone in the fields he turns into an earth worm. Life and books must be shaken and taken in the right proportions. Reading, listening, talking, travel, leisure - many different things it seems are mixed together. ~Cornelia Funke, Inkheart, 2003, translated from the German by Anthea Bell Her whole house is full of books - looks as if she likes them better than human company. Let there remain a tribe of book-worms still and Heaven forbid that the classics should fall into contempt! ~Harriet Martineau, Illustrations of Political Economy, 1834 ~Louisa May Alcott, "Burdens," Little Women, 1868 Jo, in this quiet place, would curl herself up in the easy-chair and devour poetry, romance, history, travels, and pictures, like a regular book-worm. The dim, dusty room, with the busts staring down from the tall book-cases, the cosy chairs, the globes, and, best of all, the wilderness of books, in which she could wander where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her. Jo remembered the kind old gentleman, who used to let her build railroads and bridges with his big dictionaries and tell her stories about the queer pictures in his Latin books. I suspect the real attraction was a large library of fine books, which was left to dust and spiders since Uncle March died. ~Louisa May Alcott, Eight Cousins or, The Aunt-Hill, 1874 This old fellow is Mac, the bookworm, called Worm for short. They have loved reading." ~Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), "How Should One Read a Book?," The Second Common Reader, 1932 Yet who reads to bring about an end however desirable? Are there not some pursuits that we practise because they are good in themselves, and some pleasures that are final? And is not this among them? I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards - their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble - the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. S EE A LSO: BOOKWORMS (INSECTS), READING IN BED, SMELL OF BOOKS, NOSE IN BOOKS, BOOKS & READING, LITERATURE –ღTerri I am indeed one of these creatures who can't get enough of books whether it's reading them, smelling them, or just being around them! Welcome to my page of quotations about the voracious readers and book addicts known as bookworms. ![]()
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