Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

- Guin, Ursula K. Le

Best Quotes about Books - reading

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

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

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

Huxley, Aldous

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love for reading.

Choate, Rufus

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

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

Gibbon, Edward

The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

Hardwick, Elizabeth

10.

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

11.

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

Dawkins, John

12.

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

Dane, Frank

13.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.

Berger, John

14.

When the book comes out it may hurt you -- but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.

Baldwin, James

15.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

Bachelard, Gaston

16.

Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.

Rohn, Jim

17.

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

Mccay, James T.

18.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Adler, Mortimer J.

19.

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

20.

Very young children eat their books, literally devouring their contents. This is one reason for the scarcity of first editions of Alice in Wonderland and other favorites of the nursery.

Rosenbach, A. S. W.

21.

A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever.

Tupper, Martin

22.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

23.

Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use.

Blackie, Professor

24.

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

Gibbon, Edward

25.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

Butler, Samuel

26.

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

Goldsmith, Oliver

27.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

28.

Books in a large university library system: 2, 000,000. Books in an average large city library: 1 0,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30, 000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20, 000.

Horowitz, Lois

29.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

30.

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

Wesley, John

31.

You are wise, witty and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of stuff.

Critchfield, Jim

32.

For a good book has this quality, that it is not merely a petrifaction of its author, but that once it has been tossed behind, like Deucalion's little stone, it acquires a separate and vivid life of its own.

Lejeune, Caroline

33.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

34.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

Belloc, Hilaire

35.

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

36.

Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman other or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.

Eagleton, Terry

37.

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Books succeed, and lives fail.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

41.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with all the finest men of past centuries.

Descartes, Rene

42.

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

Sandwell, B. K.

43.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

44.

I've never know any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Secondat, Charles de

45.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

Maclennan, Hugh

46.

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

47.

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.

48.

This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing.

Miller, Henry

49.

A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

Johnson, Samuel

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