Motivational Quotes

Books

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

Best Quotes about Books

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Lord Acton

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

Marie de Sevigne

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

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

Charles De Secondat

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

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

Mark Twain

Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

Kathleen Norris

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

Sir Arthur Helps

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

William Shakespeare

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Frank Zappa

15.

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

Upton Sinclair

16.

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.

Charles Caleb Colton

17.

Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.

Arnold Lobel

18.

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

19.

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

Cicero

20.

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.

Austin Phelps

21.

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

Christopher Morley

22.

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

Evan Esar

23.

Live always in the best company when you read.

Sydney Smith

24.

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

Logan Pearsall Smith

25.

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

Dame Rose Macaulay

26.

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

Robertson Davies

27.

This book fills a much-needed gap.

Moses Hadas

28.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

29.

I have read your book and much like it.

Moses Hadas

30.

You can cover a great deal of country in books.

Andrew Lang

31.

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.

Harold Bloom

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

John Witherspoon

35.

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

Sir Richard Steele

36.

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

Groucho Marx

37.

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book...

Dwight D. Eisenhower

38.

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

William Goldman

39.

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

Bell Hooks

40.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G. K. Chesterton

41.

Woe be to him that reads but one book.

George Herbert

42.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

Voltaire

43.

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

44.

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

45.

I read part of it all the way through.

Samuel Goldwyn

46.

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

47.

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.

Moses Hadas

48.

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

49.

From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

Groucho Marx

50.

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