Motivational Quotes

Books

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

- Sir Arthur Helps

Best Quotes about Books

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

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

Christopher Morley

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

Groucho Marx

Woe be to him that reads but one book.

George Herbert

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

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Lord Acton

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

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

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

10.

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

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.

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

Dame Rose Macaulay

13.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

Voltaire

14.

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

15.

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

Robertson Davies

16.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

17.

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

Marie de Sevigne

18.

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

Sir Richard Steele

19.

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

20.

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

Ralph Novak

21.

I have read your book and much like it.

Moses Hadas

22.

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

23.

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

24.

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

Lenore Hershey

25.

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

Groucho Marx

26.

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

Kathleen Norris

27.

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

28.

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

Mark Twain

29.

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

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.

You can cover a great deal of country in books.

Andrew Lang

32.

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

33.

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

John Witherspoon

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.

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

Frank Zappa

36.

This book fills a much-needed gap.

Moses Hadas

37.

Live always in the best company when you read.

Sydney Smith

38.

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

Bell Hooks

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Logan Pearsall Smith

42.

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

43.

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

Cicero

44.

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

William Shakespeare

45.

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

G. K. Chesterton

46.

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