Over time, I have come across some great quotes about books, about the English language, and about words; in fact, my website is named after a favorite quote about books. So what I’ve decided to do is share with you some of my favorites, along with anything I can find about their origins.

The perfect first Quotable is the one that inspired the name of my website:

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.  From each of them goes out its own voice… and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart.  ~Gilbert Highet

Gilbert Highet was a writer, an academic and an intellectual who believed strongly in education and the power of books.