Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

- Baudelaire, Charles

Best Quotes about Books - reading

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring

Chappell, Warren

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

Proverb, American

There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

Mencken, H. L.

The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.

Orwell, George

The novel can't compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who's had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

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

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

Wilde, Oscar

10.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

11.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

12.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

13.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

14.

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

15.

I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed -- and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.

Dawkins, John

16.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

17.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

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

19.

Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.

Baker, Nicholson

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.

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

Camus, Albert

22.

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

Rohn, Jim

23.

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

Pound, Ezra

24.

A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there -- that of the pulse, the heart beat.

Miller, Henry

25.

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.

Spielberg, Steven

26.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

27.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

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

Brown, Les

29.

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, Lighthouses as the poet said erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

30.

What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.

Carlyle, Thomas

31.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

32.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

Ruskin, John

33.

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

Butler, Samuel

34.

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

Twain, Mark

35.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

36.

We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things -- the teacher of all truth.

Kingsley, Charles

37.

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

Secondat, Charles de

38.

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

39.

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

Colton, Charles Caleb

40.

The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.

Benjamin, Walter

41.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

42.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Mallarme, Stephane

44.

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

45.

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

46.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Asimov, Isaac

47.

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

48.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.