Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Maclennan, Hugh

You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.

Ruskin, John

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them.

Twain, Mark

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.

Lawrence, D. H.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

Butler, Samuel

A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.

Cooley, Charles Horton

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

Auden, W. H.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

10.

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Pound, Ezra

11.

The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, The medicines of the soul.

Hood, Paxton

12.

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

13.

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

Harington, John

14.

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.

Eco, Umberto

15.

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

16.

I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

Bevan, Aneurin

17.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

18.

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.

Joubert, Joseph

19.

A book might be written on the injustice of the just.

Hope, Anthony

20.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

21.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.

Hemingway, Ernest

22.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Woolf, Virginia

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

27.

Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

Wesley, John

28.

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

Critchfield, Jim

29.

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

Forster, Edward M.

30.

It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.

Hunt, Leigh

31.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

32.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

33.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with all the finest men of past centuries.

Descartes, Rene

34.

'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

35.

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

36.

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

Wycherley, William

37.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

38.

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

39.

Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.

Milton, John

40.

A novel points out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.

Carey, Joyce

41.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Adler, Mortimer J.

42.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

43.

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

Lee, Spike

44.

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

Coolio

45.

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

46.

A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

Johnson, Samuel

47.

A good book is the very essence of a good man. His virtues survive in it, while the foibles and faults of his actual life are forgotten. All the goodly company of the excellent and great sit around my table, or look down on me from yonder shelves, waiting patiently to answer my questions and enrich me with their wisdom. A precious book is a foretaste of immortality.

Cuyler, Theodore L.

48.

Then I though of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

49.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Barrett, E.S.

50.

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