“Good books are as good friends, willing to give to us if we are willing to make a little effort.”
“There are a great many branches of education: some go to college to learn languages, some to study law, some to study physic [sic], and some to study astronomy, and various other branches of science. … But our favourite study is that branch which particularly belongs to the Elders of Israel—namely, theology. Every Elder should become a profound theologian—should understand this branch better than all the world.”
| Journal of Discourses, 6:317.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
People who love books never have spare time!
“The reading habit is most valuable in life. I mean by that the practice of using a little time, say half an hour a day, in the systematic reading of worthwhile literature. The mind is opened to precious fields of thought; the achievements of the ages become ours; even the future takes form. As the mind and spirit are fed by well chosen reading, comfort, peace and understanding come to the soul. Those who have not tried it, have missed a keen and easily accessible joy. Moreover a person who engages in such a regular daily reading, if only a few minutes a day, in the course of a few years becomes a learned man. But it must be a regular daily habit. … Some of the best educated men that I have ever met have never been to college but have acquired the habit of daily reading of good books for a few minutes a day.”
| Conference Report, April 1939, p. 21.
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
“There is something almost sacred about a great library because it represents the preservation of the wisdom, the learning, and the pondering of men and women of all the ages, accumulated under one roof.”
| Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes
“There is something wonderful about a book. We can pick it up. We can heft it. We can read it. We can set it down. We can think of what we have read. It does something for us. We can share great minds, great actions, and great undertakings in the pages of a book.”
| Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes
“I know of no other practice which will make one more attractive in conversation than to be well-read in a variety of subjects. There is a great potential within each of us to go on learning. Regardless of our age, unless there be serious illness, we can read, study, drink in the writings of wonderful men and women. It is never too late to learn. ”
| Stand a Little Taller
“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.”
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