Motivational Quotes

Books

It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead.

- Dame Rose Macaulay

Best Quotes about Books

Do give books - religious or otherwise - for Christmas. They're never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal.

Lenore Hershey

This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

William Goldman

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

G. K. Chesterton

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

Groucho Marx

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Lord Acton

I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Charles De Secondat

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

Sir Francis Bacon

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

Groucho Marx

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

Christopher Morley

10.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Albert Einstein

11.

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.

Henry James

12.

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith

13.

Fahrenheit 451 is one of those books that is about how amazing books are and how amazing the people who write books are. Writers love writing books like this, and for some reason, we let them get away with it.

Josh Lieb

14.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

Voltaire

15.

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

Robertson Davies

16.

It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead.

Dame Rose Macaulay

17.

Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.

Bell Hooks

18.

Reading this book is like waiting for the first shoe to drop.

Ralph Novak

19.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

20.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Mark Twain

21.

Woe be to him that reads but one book.

George Herbert

22.

Live always in the best company when you read.

Sydney Smith

23.

I have read your book and much like it.

Moses Hadas

24.

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.

Austin Phelps

25.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

Robertson Davies

26.

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

27.

You can cover a great deal of country in books.

Andrew Lang

28.

There's a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word "banal" sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say "underedited," I say "derivative." The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.

Anna Quindlen

29.

Oh for a book and a shady nook...

John Wilson

30.

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.

Charles W. Eliot

31.

I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.

Upton Sinclair

32.

Books...are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with'em, then we grow out of'em and leave'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.

Dorothy L. Sayers

33.

I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.

Frank Zappa

34.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Cicero

35.

This book fills a much-needed gap.

Moses Hadas

36.

Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.

William Shakespeare

37.

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

Sir Arthur Helps

38.

This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.

Alfred Hitchcock

39.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

Sir Francis Bacon

40.

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Ezra Pound

41.

I read part of it all the way through.

Samuel Goldwyn

42.

Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.

Horace Mann

43.

Read at least one book a month. This is self-serving, obviously. It's a proven fact that people who read buy more books than people who don't read. In truth, I wish you'd read ten books a month, or at least buy that many.

Randy Pausch

44.

When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

Michel de Montaigne

45.

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

W. H. Auden

46.

When I step into this library, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it.

Marie de Sevigne

47.

Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.

John Witherspoon

48.

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.

W. Somerset Maugham

49.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Sir Richard Steele

50.

Most new books are forgotten within a year, especially by those who borrow them.

Evan Esar