Never lend if you need repayment; never give where you want a return.

No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.

Ein Buch, das man liebt, darf man nicht leihen, sondern muss es besitzen.

No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books, either to discover or to control himself.

Never read any book that is not a year old.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you wouldn't read yourself.

No one ever reads a book. He
reads himself through books.

Never read a book that is not a year old.

Put down the pen someone else gave you. No one ever drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink.

Lending a favorite book has its risks; the borrower may not like it. I still don’t know a better novel than Crime and Punishment — still, every fourth or fifth borrower returns it unfinished: it depresses him; besides that, he didn’t believe it. More borrowers than this return the first volume of Remembrance of Things Past unfinished: they were bored. There is no book you can lend people that all of them will like.

Nobody ever reads the same book twice.

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.

What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?

Books read in a public library never have the same flavour as books read in the attic or the kitchen.