For

- Books are vast sources of knowledge. They are sacred as well as holy.
- They form one’s conscience and help people develop their notion of right and wrong.
- Soul of a body prevents the being from becoming a savage or cannibal. In the same way books bring
virtue to a structure or room.
- Books play a vital role in one’s education and constitute a major part in one’s life.

Against
- A room is a non-living object, contrary to the living body, the simile is thus erroneous.
- There are good books, there are bad books. Why should it be assumed that the soul, even if there is
one, is chaste and pure?
- Books are inventions of authors but a soul can’t be imparted from a body.

This simile is an erroneous one as the comparison is made between a living and non living thing. Both
have their own part to play in one’s life. Books are a great medium of knowledge but it should not be
compared with intellectual stuff like body and soul.

 RE: A room without books is like a body without soul. -Vishwanath (02/12/17)
 We r compare the book as a 'soul'.. Realy very nice quote, books are the our life we can learn
or catch any kind of knowledge through it..reards vishu
 RE: A room without books is like a body without soul. -Prashant Triptahi (11/17/15)
 Books are the building blocks of our thinking process. Whether they take the form of
childhood bedtime stories, travel companions, even stories of an altogether different part of the
world or the general know-hows of a topic, books are irreplaceable. There is a reason why the
work had to be published on paper and not just scribbled out somewhere on the internet. Granted
most of the work people read is from the pre-internet era, one has to still acknowledge that a fair
proportion of the intellectuals were known to read a lot of the written text.
Now coming to the soul part, soul is nothing but a figment of our thoughts. The soul is as healthy
or clean as our thoughts are. The sole purpose of writing a book is not just to teach something or
preach a thought, the best writers are those who have evoked thoughts, and left the reader with
something to ponder about. When we find these hidden messages as a reader, the souls feeds off
them and the purpose of the book is fulfilled. In recent times, Paulo Coelho is one such reader
who has gained immense global popularity for maintaining this style and making people think
and providing what some even refer to as a spiritual journey.
In my view, regular yoga and reading, and you don't need Metlife. (Peace of mind guaranteed is
the famous tagline associated with Metlife)
"A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read." - Mark Twain
 RE: A room without books is like a body without soul. -mohit Singh (12/20/14)
 we treat book as a soul .it gives root to every thing. so every person keep book of his choice.
if he may be illiterate he have holy books in his room . books give a positive impact on our life.
 RE: A room without books is like a body without soul. -aakarsh (12/17/14)
 Not a nice topic
 RE: A room without books is like a body without soul. -geeta (10/31/14)
 Books are very important in our life. We can get any kind of knowledge from books and our
bad thinking or views can be change into good. But here I think there shoud be no comparison
bet room without books and body wihtout soul. They are different things. They not make any
sense.
 RE: A room without books is like a body without soul. -bhoopal (09/25/14)
 The topic looks strange when I heard this for the first time.
A room may be composed of anyything and it depends upon the person who uses it.Books may
or mayn't be part of the room.suppose if an illiterate person is living in that room then it is not an
essential to have a book in his room.so it depends only on the person's interests.
Every live person has his own soul.so it is not possible to seperate it until his death.so finally I
want to say that 'it is not mandatory that having a book in every room and it only depends on
person who uses it.

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” —

Cicero
By: Alexandra Medina-Leal

There is this very funny scene from an episode of Seinfeld where George asks his best friend
Jerry to go over to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment to pick up some books that he forgot to take
before he broke up with her.  Jerry mocks him by asking why people insist on keeping the books
they have already read in their homes as some sort of trophy on their shelves.  On the surface
Jerry is right; doesn’t it make more sense for us to save our money by renting books from the
library and then returning them once we are done? Why do we decorate our walls with books we
all too often haven’t even read?  Are we proud to own Moby Dick or a biography of Beethoven
because we think that this somehow says something about our character?

I too have a mini library in my home and I stare at my books like a new mom stares at her child.
For me my books have deep sentimental value and my collections show the different stages in
my intellectual development.  I like to keep a record of how I have progressed and I also keep a
section of books I have yet to read as a reminder of where I hope to be – the person I hope to be
– some day in the future. I hope that books that are rich in information will change the way that I
think, behave, feel, and connect with others; such a transformation is beyond the physical and
can changer one’s temperament and spirit.  Perhaps we truly are feeding our souls when we pick
up a book.

The soul, in both religious and philosophical thinking, is that immaterial part of our being that
connects us with what is beyond the corruptible and impermanent world.  It is the channel
through which we are united with what is beyond human experience and human creation – The
Ultimate Being, The Uncreated Creator, The First, God etc.  The connectedness of flesh and
spirit is beyond complete human understanding, but its indivisible unity is undeniable.  But one
does not have to be a religious person to appreciate what the soul represents.  It can simply be
that ineffable part of a human being that makes us special, rational, and able to experience love,
goodness, and justice; our soul is our humanity.

So following Cicero’s metaphor, one can say that a room is lacking meaning and definition
without books to fulfill its purpose.  The room need not even be a physical place; the room in our
hearts must be decorated with the beautiful pages of literary masterpieces. We are most
glamorous when we are covered in knowledge and most complete when we are basking in the
light of truth.  Most books are indeed bastions of knowledge and insight into the human
condition.  Even if the information they contain is proven scientifically incorrect or exemplify
beliefs that are no longer the accepted norm, they at least show how far humankind has come and
how truly a curious species we have always been.   I believe that books can connect us to our
past – our collective political, economic, cultural, religious, and gendered experiences – in a
beautiful time capsule that will outlive us all.

Books are indeed one of the most potent means of achieving richness of spirit because they
contain some of the most articulate expositions of all that is within the human capacity to know;
human apprehension of such universal ideas provides us with a metaphysical channel to the
beyond.