Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.

- Channing, William Ellery

Best Quotes about Books - reading

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.

Fadiman, Clifton

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.

Milton, John

She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.

Rhys, Jean

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.

Crane, Frank

A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.

Bradbury, Malcolm

Begin to read a book that will help you move toward your dream.

Brown, Les

10.

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

Townsend, Atwood H.

11.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

Frost, Robert

12.

In any situation, ask yourself: What strengths do I possess that can contribute towards accomplishing something in this situation? Then follow through.

13.

You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.

Ruskin, John

14.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

15.

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

16.

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

Pascal, Blaise

17.

What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.

Phillips, Wendell

18.

In science read the newest works, in literature read the oldest.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

19.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Johnson, Samuel

20.

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

21.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

22.

Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read.

23.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

24.

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

Wycherley, William

25.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

26.

An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.

Traherne, Thomas

27.

What is important is not to be able to read rapidly, but to be able to decide what not to read.

Mccay, James T.

28.

The book you don't read won't help.

Rohn, Jim

29.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Woolf, Virginia

30.

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason: they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. Those works, therefore, are the most valuable, that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation. understand them.

Clarendon

31.

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

32.

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

Forster, Edward M.

33.

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

Gibbon, Edward

34.

Read, read, read. Read everything-- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

Faulkner, William

35.

Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

36.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Lee, Harper

37.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Fielding, Henry

38.

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.

Burgess, Anthony

39.

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

Dane, Frank

40.

How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?

Shaw, George Bernard

41.

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

Forster, Edward M.

42.

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

43.

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

Luther, Martin

44.

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

45.

God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

Channing, William Ellery

46.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.

Sandwell, B. K.

47.

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

Carey, Joyce

48.

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

Hugo, Victor

49.

I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.

Phelps, William Lyon

50.

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading! Take them out of this book, for instance, --you might as well take the book along with them; --one cold external winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer; --he steps forth like a bridegroom, --bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.

Sterne, Laurence