Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

- Balfour, Arthur James

Best Quotes about Books - reading

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.

Whitman, Walt

Read Homer once, and you can read no more. For all books else appear so mean, and so poor. Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, and Homer will be all the books you need.

Buckingham, Duke of

Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use.

Blackie, Professor

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

Critchfield, Jim

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

A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

More, Hannah

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

10.

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

11.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

Thoreau, Henry David

12.

I've never know any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Secondat, Charles de

13.

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.

Harington, John

14.

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Mansfield, Katherine

15.

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

16.

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

Maclennan, Hugh

17.

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

18.

Surviving and thriving as a professional today demands two new approaches to the written word. First, it requires a new approach to orchestrating information, by skillfully choosing what to read and what to ignore. Second, it requires a new approach to integrating information, by reading faster and with greater comprehension.

Calano, Jimmy

19.

Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.

Channing, William Ellery

20.

Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.

Johnson

21.

I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book.

Coolio

22.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

Edwards, Tryon

23.

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

25.

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

26.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Camus, Albert

27.

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.

Porter, Noah

28.

How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?

Shaw, George Bernard

29.

What is the most precious, the most exciting smell awaiting you in the house when you return to it after a dozen years or so? The smell of roses, you think? No, moldering books.

Sinyavsky, Andre

30.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency --the belief that the here and now is all there is.

Bloom, Allan

31.

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

Voltaire

32.

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations -- such is pleasure beyond compare.

Kenko, Yoshida

33.

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

Hubbard, Elbert

34.

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book --I call that vicious!

Nietzsche, Friedrich

35.

Miss a meal if you have to, but don't miss a book.

Rohn, Jim

36.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

Twain, Mark

37.

In science read the newest works, in literature read the oldest.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

38.

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

39.

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Erasmus, Desiderius

40.

What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.

Phillips, Wendell

41.

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''

42.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

Mccosh

43.

The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

Faulkner, William

44.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

Fuentes, Carlos

45.

For a good book has this quality, that it is not merely a petrifaction of its author, but that once it has been tossed behind, like Deucalion's little stone, it acquires a separate and vivid life of its own.

Lejeune, Caroline

46.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

Frost, Robert

47.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

Belloc, Hilaire

48.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life --and one is as good as the other.

Hemingway, Ernest

49.

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

50.

My books kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon.

Hood, Thomas