Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.

- Temple, Sir William

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

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

Miss a meal if you have to, but don't miss a book.

Rohn, Jim

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

Pound, Ezra

The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, The medicines of the soul.

Hood, Paxton

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

Benjamin, Walter

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

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

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

Rohn, Jim

10.

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

11.

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.

12.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Penn, William

13.

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

Johnson, Samuel

14.

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

15.

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

16.

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

Rostand, Jean

17.

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

18.

You will be the same person in five as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.

Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''

19.

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

20.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

21.

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

22.

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

Phillips, Wendell

23.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

24.

My books kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon.

Hood, Thomas

25.

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

Thurber, James

26.

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Fuller, Margaret

27.

To read too many books is harmful.

Zedong, Mao

28.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

29.

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

Gissing, George Robert

30.

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

Disraeli, Benjamin

31.

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

Butler, Samuel

32.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

Ruskin, John

33.

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

34.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

35.

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Erasmus, Desiderius

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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.

39.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

40.

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.

Porter, Noah

41.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life --and one is as good as the other.

Hemingway, Ernest

42.

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

Carlyle, Thomas

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

47.

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

Channing, William Ellery

48.

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

Joubert, Joseph

49.

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

50.

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

Mccay, James T.