A room without books is like a body without a soul.

The line expresses a humanist conviction that books are not mere decorations or tools but the animating presence of intellectual and moral life. By likening a bookless room to a soulless body, the saying frames reading and learning as what gives a private space (and, by extension, a person or household) depth, memory, and spirit. It also implies that culture is a form of inner vitality: without engagement with ideas preserved in texts, one’s environment may be materially complete yet existentially empty. The aphorism has become a modern slogan for bibliophilia and education, even when detached from any verifiable ancient context.