Motivational Quotes

Books

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

- Sir Arthur Helps

Best Quotes about Books

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

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

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

Lenore Hershey

Woe be to him that reads but one book.

George Herbert

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

Voltaire

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

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

William Goldman

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

Sir Richard Steele

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.

Austin Phelps

10.

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

11.

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

Bell Hooks

12.

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

Cicero

13.

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

Kathleen Norris

14.

I read part of it all the way through.

Samuel Goldwyn

15.

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

Charles De Secondat

16.

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

17.

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

G. K. Chesterton

18.

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

Marie de Sevigne

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Lord Acton

22.

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

Frank Zappa

23.

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

Sir Arthur Helps

24.

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

Mark Twain

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Moses Hadas

28.

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

29.

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

Harold Bloom

30.

Oh for a book and a shady nook...

John Wilson

31.

Live always in the best company when you read.

Sydney Smith

32.

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

33.

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

Groucho Marx

34.

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

35.

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

36.

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

37.

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

Evan Esar

38.

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

John Witherspoon

39.

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

Robertson Davies

40.

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

41.

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

42.

I have read your book and much like it.

Moses Hadas

43.

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

Logan Pearsall Smith

44.

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

W. H. Auden

45.

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

William Shakespeare

46.

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

47.

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

Dame Rose Macaulay

48.

This book fills a much-needed gap.

Moses Hadas

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.

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