Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

- Aubrey, John

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

Whipple, Edwin P.

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

McKenna, Richard

If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that.

Carlyle, Thomas

The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You should live several lives while reading it.

Styron, William

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

Auden, W. H.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

Maclennan, Hugh

Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books. Quick, quick! Fling Peregrine Pickle under the toilette --throw Roderick Random into the closet --put The Innocent Adultery into The Whole Duty of Man; thrust Lord Aimworth under the sofa! cram Ovid behind the bolster; there --put The Man of Feeling into your pocket. Now for them.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

10.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

11.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

12.

Begin to read a book that will help you move toward your dream.

Brown, Les

13.

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

Marx, Groucho

14.

He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.

Barrow

15.

Learning to read has been reduced to a process of mastering a series of narrow, specific, hierarchical skills. Where armed-forces recruits learn the components of a rifle or the intricacies of close order drill by the numbers, recruits to reading learn its mechanics sound by sound and word by word.

Gross, Jacquelyn

16.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Brodsky, Joseph

17.

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

Hadas, Moses

18.

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

Disney, Walt

19.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

20.

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.

Carter, Angela

21.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

22.

A book is like a man -- clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

Steinbeck, John

23.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

24.

In any situation, ask yourself: What strengths do I possess that can contribute towards accomplishing something in this situation? Then follow through.

25.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

26.

The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine -- but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.

Keith, Sir Arthur

27.

The book you don't read won't help.

Rohn, Jim

28.

The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.

Brookner, Anita

29.

You will be the same person in five as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.

Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''

30.

When the book comes out it may hurt you -- but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.

Baldwin, James

31.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

32.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

33.

It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along the shore.

Fuller, Margaret

34.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

35.

Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read.

36.

The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

37.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

38.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

Bachelard, Gaston

39.

A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new.

Mcluhan, Marshall

40.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

41.

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

Twain, Mark

42.

A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.

Murray, William

43.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

44.

You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.

Lee, Spike

45.

The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.

Leacock, Stephen B.

46.

You are wise, witty and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of stuff.

Critchfield, Jim

47.

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

Pound, Ezra

48.

If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.

Davies, Robertson

49.

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet -- if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.

Miller, Henry

50.

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. Those works, therefore, are the most valuable, that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation. understand them.

Clarendon