Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Milton, John

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

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

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Kieran, John

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

Forster, Edward M.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.

Trevelyan, G. M.

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

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

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

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

10.

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality -- the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

Benson, Arthur Christopher

11.

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

Gibbon, Edward

12.

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

Twain, Mark

13.

You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.

Lee, Spike

14.

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.

Hugo, Victor

15.

After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else.

Lawrence, D. H.

16.

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Pound, Ezra

17.

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

18.

You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.

Kump, Peter

19.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

20.

When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.

Geneen, Harold S.

21.

I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book.

Coolio

22.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

23.

A good book is the very essence of a good man. His virtues survive in it, while the foibles and faults of his actual life are forgotten. All the goodly company of the excellent and great sit around my table, or look down on me from yonder shelves, waiting patiently to answer my questions and enrich me with their wisdom. A precious book is a foretaste of immortality.

Cuyler, Theodore L.

24.

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

Seferis, Giorgos

25.

Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us -- never cease to instruct -- never cloy.

Colton, Charles Caleb

26.

Read Homer once, and you can read no more. For all books else appear so mean, and so poor. Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, and Homer will be all the books you need.

Buckingham, Duke of

27.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

28.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.

Joubert, Joseph

30.

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

31.

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

Frost, Robert

32.

You will find most books worth reading are worth reading twice.

Morely, John

33.

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

Phelps, William Lyon

34.

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.

35.

There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

Mencken, H. L.

36.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Mallarme, Stephane

37.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

38.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

39.

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.

40.

Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.

Jackson, Holbrook

41.

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.

42.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

43.

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

Mccay, James T.

44.

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

Lee, Harper

45.

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost always a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.

Mann, Horace

46.

In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.

Rosten, Leo

47.

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

Hugo, Victor

48.

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

Byron, Lord

49.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.

Disney, Walt

50.

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