Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

- Bennett, Arnold

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Luther, Martin

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.

Fadiman, Clifton

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

One sheds one's sicknesses in books -- repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.

Lawrence, D. H.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine -- everybody drinks water.

Twain, Mark

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Eliot, George

God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

Channing, William Ellery

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

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

10.

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

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

11.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

12.

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

13.

There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.

Mencken, H. L.

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.

Rhys, Jean

19.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Johnson, Samuel

20.

A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever.

Tupper, Martin

21.

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

Hunt, Leigh

22.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

23.

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

Forster, Edward M.

24.

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

Ruskin, John

25.

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

Faulkner, William

26.

You will find most books worth reading are worth reading twice.

Morely, John

27.

There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?

Tsvetaeva, Marina

28.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

29.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

30.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

31.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

32.

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

33.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.

Lamb, Charles

34.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

35.

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

36.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

37.

What is important is not to be able to read rapidly, but to be able to decide what not to read.

Mccay, James T.

38.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

39.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

40.

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

41.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

42.

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

43.

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

44.

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.

Maugham, W. Somerset

45.

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

Bury, Richard De

46.

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

47.

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

48.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

Hazlitt, William

49.

Don't just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

Rohn, Jim

50.

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

Pound, Ezra