One best book is equal to hundred good friends but one good friend is equal to a library

The so-called paradoxes of an author, to which a reader takes exception, often exist not in the author's book at all, but rather in the reader's head.

It was great fun writing a book.... It built an impalpable crystal sphere around one of interests and ideas. In a sense one felt like a goldfish in a bowl; but in this case the goldfish made his own bowl. This came along everywhere with me. It never got knocked about in travelling, and there was never a moment when agreeable occupation was lacking. Either the glass had to be polished, or the structure extended or contracted, or the walls required strengthening.

Why is The Origin of Species such a great book? First of all, because it convincingly demonstrates the fact of evolution: it provides a vast and well-chosen body of evidence showing that existing animals and plants cannot have been separately created in their present forms, but must have evolved from earlier forms by slow transformation.

Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.