Motivational Quotes

Books

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

- Cicero

Best Quotes about Books

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

Logan Pearsall Smith

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Lord Acton

I have read your book and much like it.

Moses Hadas

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

Marie de Sevigne

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

Mark Twain

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

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

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

Jane Austen

Live always in the best company when you read.

Sydney Smith

10.

You can cover a great deal of country in books.

Andrew Lang

11.

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

12.

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

Harold Bloom

13.

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

14.

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

Frank Zappa

15.

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

Robertson Davies

16.

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

17.

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

Bell Hooks

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.

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

Moses Hadas

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Christopher Morley

23.

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

24.

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

Salman Rushdie

25.

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

26.

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

Sir Arthur Helps

27.

Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.

Paxton Hood

28.

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

Ralph Novak

29.

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

30.

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

W. H. Auden

31.

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

32.

I read part of it all the way through.

Samuel Goldwyn

33.

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

Cicero

34.

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

Alfred Hitchcock

35.

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

Groucho Marx

36.

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

Groucho Marx

37.

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

Dame Rose Macaulay

38.

Woe be to him that reads but one book.

George Herbert

39.

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

Evan Esar

40.

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

Lenore Hershey

41.

This book fills a much-needed gap.

Moses Hadas

42.

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

43.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

44.

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

Charles De Secondat

45.

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

John Witherspoon

46.

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

Kathleen Norris

47.

Oh for a book and a shady nook...

John Wilson

48.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

Voltaire

49.

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

50.

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