Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.

- Barrie, Sir James M.

Best Quotes about Books - reading

The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.

Proverb, American

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it --when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.

Rushdie, Salman

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

Brookner, Anita

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

Adler, Mortimer J.

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

Forster, Edward M.

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

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

After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else.

Lawrence, D. H.

10.

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

Goldsmith, Oliver

11.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

12.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

13.

Everything in this book may be wrong. [The Savior's Manual]

Bach, Richard

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Vaneigem, Raoul

17.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch.

Steele, Sir Richard

18.

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Locke, John

19.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

20.

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

Thurber, James

21.

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

Phillips, Wendell

22.

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

Pound, Ezra

23.

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

Camus, Albert

24.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.

Disney, Walt

25.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

26.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

27.

The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.

Barstow, Stan

28.

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

Rohn, Jim

29.

You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.

Kump, Peter

30.

Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.

Johnson

31.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

32.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

Thoreau, Henry David

33.

An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.

Traherne, Thomas

34.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

35.

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

Lee, Spike

36.

The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.

Luther, Martin

37.

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

38.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

39.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

40.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

Lincoln, Abraham

42.

Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.

Morely, John

43.

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

Rostand, Jean

44.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

45.

When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.

Geneen, Harold S.

46.

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

47.

Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.

Chambers, Oswald

48.

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

Byron, Lord

49.

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in it.

Byron, Lord

50.

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

Gibbon, Edward