“Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate!”

— Horace Mann

The Duty of Owning Books (1859)
Context: Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate! To spend several days in a friend’s house and hunger for something to read, while you are treading on costly carpets, sitting upon luxurious chairs and sleeping upon down, is as if one were bribing your body for the sake of cheating your mind.

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Horace Mann 67

American politician 1796–1859

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

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

The Duty of Owning Books (1859)
Context: Men are not accustomed to buy books unless they want them. If, on visiting the dwelling of a man of slender means, I find the reason why he has cheap carpets and very plain furniture to be that he may purchase books, he rises at once in my esteem. Books are not made for furniture but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

“Let your house
be spacious more than splendid, and be books
And busts your most conspicuous furniture.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: Savonarola (1881), Lorenzo de' Medici in Act I, sc. i; p. 6.

“No furniture so charming as books.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Vol. I, ch. 9
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)
Source: A memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith

“books—there is a good kind of a book and a bad kind of a book. I am not to assume that you are all ill acquainted with this; but I may remind you that it is a very important consideration at present. It casts aside altogether the idea that people have that if they are reading any book—that if an ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing rather better than nothing at all.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

“Books do furnish a room.”

Anthony Powell (1905–2000) English novelist

Source: Dance to the Music of Time

“My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is, me judice [in my opinion], no book - it is a plaything.”

Thomas Love Peacock book Crotchet Castle

Crotchet Castle, chapter IX. Though not named, the author under discussion is clearly Sir Walter Scott.

“I'm not making any progress with the book that you were so kind to lend me [about techniques of etching]; the desire to study tie facts for etching from a book does not exist with me…. if you would rather give me some lessons, so that I can get some information, I will be glad.. [which happened February / March 1891] (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

Suze Robertson (1855–1922) Dutch painter

(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Suze Robertson's brief:) Met het boek welk U zoo vriendelijk waart mij ter leen te geven [boek over de techniek van het etsen] schiet ik niet hard op; de lust om de gegevens voor het etsen uit een boek te bestudeeren, bestaat bij mij niet.. ..[mocht u] liever nog mij eenige lessen geven , waardoor ik eenigszins op de hoogte kome, dan zal het mij aangenaam zijn.. [dat gebeurde in februari / maart 1891]
In her letter to , 12 Jan. 1890; as cited in Suze Robertson, ed. Anna Wagner en Herbert Henkels; Nijgh & van Ditmar, 1984, p. 10
before 1900

“What kind of life can you have in a house without books?”

Sherman Alexie book Flight

Source: Flight

“You will want a book which contains not man's thoughts, but God's — not a book that may amuse you, but a book that can save you — not even a book that can instruct you, but a book on which you can venture an eternity — not only a book which can give relief to your spirit, but redemption to your soul — a book which contains salvation, and conveys it to you, one which shall at once be the Saviour's book and the sinner's.”

John Selden (1584–1654) English jurist and scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution, and of Jewish law

as reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 29.

“Just give me a comfortable couch, a dog, a good book, and a woman. Then if you can get the dog to go somewhere and read the book, I might have a little fun.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

“Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate!”

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