Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Books
A house without books is like a room without windows.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole habitable globe, and Timbuctu itself is not safe from British Literature.
—Thomas Carlyle
A book, like a grape-vine, should have good fruit among its leaves.
—Edward Parsons Day
As a thing on the eastern mountains shineth by the presence of the sun; so one of humble birth, even, may be enlightened by the allurements of good books.
—Hitopadesa
Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep, for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.
—Paxton Hood
It is with books as with women,—where a certain plainness of manner and of dress is more engaging than the glare of paint and airs and apparel, which may dazzle the eye, but reach not the affections.
—David Hume
Gentlemen vse bookes as Gentlewomen handle their flowers, who in the morning stick them in their heads, and at night strawe them at their heeles.
—John Lyly
Books are as meats and viands are: some are good, some of evil substance.
—John Milton
A book, like a person, has its fortunes with one; is lucky or unlucky in the precise moment of its falling in our way, and often by some happy accident ranks with us for something more than its independent value.
—Walter Pater
We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most.
—Plutarch
To buy books only because they were published by an eminent printer, is much as if a man should buy clothes that did not fit him, only because made by some famous tailor.
—Alexander Pope
Books, like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.
—Jonathan Swift
Books, like proverbs, receive their value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.
—Sir William Temple