Weekend Meditation-“Some books leave us free and some books make us free.”

“Some books leave us free and some books make us free.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”- Charles W. Eliot

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.” – Gustave Flaubert

“Everywhere I have sought peace and not found it, except in a corner with a book.”
– Thomas a Kempis

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest (people) of the past centuries.” – Descartes

“Reading brings us unknown friends” – Honoré de Balzac

“Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.”-  Marcel Proust

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King

“Books break the shackles of time – proof that humans can work magic.” – Carl Sagan

“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.” – Ezra Pound

“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” – Victor Hugo

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”- Anna Quindlen

“You may have tangible wealth untold. Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be — I had a mother who read to me.” – Strickland Gillilan

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

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” – Italo Calvino

“Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” – Mary Schmich

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” – W. Somerset Maugham

“[F]rom the reading of ‘good books’ there comes a richness of life that can be obtained in no other way.” – Gordon B. Hinckley

“I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.”- Gary Paulsen

“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”- Annie Proulx

“We’re all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away–our stories. I guess that’s what I love about books–they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time, that make us feel less alone or even more comfortable with our aloneness, if need be.”― Libba Bray