Motivational Quotes

Books

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

- Upton Sinclair

Best Quotes about 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Witherspoon

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Groucho Marx

12.

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

William Goldman

13.

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

Bell Hooks

14.

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

15.

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Lord Acton

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

G. K. Chesterton

19.

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

20.

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

Mark Twain

21.

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

Groucho Marx

22.

I have read your book and much like it.

Moses Hadas

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.

Oh for a book and a shady nook...

John Wilson

25.

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

26.

I read part of it all the way through.

Samuel Goldwyn

27.

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

Christopher Morley

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Frank Zappa

31.

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

32.

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

William Shakespeare

33.

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

34.

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

Harold Bloom

35.

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

Dame Rose Macaulay

36.

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

Sir Richard Steele

37.

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

Cicero

38.

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

39.

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

Moses Hadas

40.

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

41.

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

Upton Sinclair

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.

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

Lenore Hershey

44.

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

45.

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

W. H. Auden

46.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

Voltaire

47.

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

48.

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

Sir Francis Bacon

49.

Woe be to him that reads but one book.

George Herbert

50.

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

Charles De Secondat