Motivational Quotes

Books

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

- G. K. Chesterton

Best Quotes about Books

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

Groucho Marx

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Lord Acton

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

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

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

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

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

Alfred Hitchcock

Woe be to him that reads but one book.

George Herbert

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

Sir Arthur Helps

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Sir Richard Steele

13.

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

William Goldman

14.

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

15.

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

Evan Esar

16.

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

W. H. Auden

17.

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

Charles De Secondat

18.

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

19.

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

Cicero

20.

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

Mark Twain

21.

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

22.

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

Harold Bloom

23.

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

Marie de Sevigne

24.

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

Ralph Novak

25.

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

Lenore Hershey

26.

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

27.

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

28.

I have read your book and much like it.

Moses Hadas

29.

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

Bell Hooks

30.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

31.

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

William Shakespeare

32.

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

Moses Hadas

33.

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

Upton Sinclair

34.

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

Kathleen Norris

35.

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

36.

You can cover a great deal of country in books.

Andrew Lang

37.

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

38.

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

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.

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

41.

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

42.

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

John Witherspoon

43.

I read part of it all the way through.

Samuel Goldwyn

44.

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

Dame Rose Macaulay

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Christopher Morley

48.

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

Frank Zappa

49.

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.