Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.

- Brooke, Rupert

Best Quotes about Books - reading

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in it.

Byron, Lord

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

Bury, Richard De

There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?

Tsvetaeva, Marina

Surviving and thriving as a professional today demands two new approaches to the written word. First, it requires a new approach to orchestrating information, by skillfully choosing what to read and what to ignore. Second, it requires a new approach to integrating information, by reading faster and with greater comprehension.

Calano, Jimmy

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

Twain, Mark

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

Howells, William Dean

The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

Kempis, Thomas

10.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

11.

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

Bruyere, Jean De La

12.

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

13.

I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed -- and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.

Dawkins, John

14.

Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

Wesley, John

15.

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.

Terry, Helen

16.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

Dane, Frank

18.

We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things -- the teacher of all truth.

Kingsley, Charles

19.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

20.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

Aubrey, John

21.

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

Gibbon, Edward

22.

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Locke, John

23.

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead.

Day, Clarence

24.

Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.

Morely, John

25.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

26.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor is any pleasure so lasting.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

27.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

Jefferson, Thomas

28.

I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.

29.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

Lowell, James Russell

30.

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.

Marcel, Anthony

31.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

32.

Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.

Worsthorne, Sir Peregrine

33.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

34.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

35.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Asimov, Isaac

36.

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought -- asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

Collier, Jeremy

37.

A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new.

Mcluhan, Marshall

38.

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

Auden, W. H.

39.

I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.

Levine, Ghita

40.

The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.

Luther, Martin

41.

The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.

Mencken, H. L.

42.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

45.

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

Hubbard, Elbert

46.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

Thackeray, William M.

47.

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

Chambers, Oswald

48.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

McKenna, Richard

49.

A novel points out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.

Carey, Joyce

50.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert