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

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

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

Chambers, Oswald

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

Townsend, Atwood H.

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

Hunt, Leigh

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.

Hugo, Victor

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

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

Pound, Ezra

10.

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

Frost, Robert

11.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

12.

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

Gibbon, Edward

13.

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

Luther, Martin

14.

Bennett, Arnold

15.

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

Twain, Mark

16.

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from the dead -- from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

Kingsley, Charles

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

20.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

21.

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

22.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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

24.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Lee, Harper

25.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

26.

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

Phillips, Wendell

27.

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

Voltaire

28.

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

Auden, W. H.

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

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

Ruskin, John

32.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

33.

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

34.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

35.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.

Sandwell, B. K.

36.

I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

37.

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

38.

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

Whitman, Walt

39.

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

Morely, John

40.

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.

Swartz, J.

41.

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

42.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Brodsky, Joseph

43.

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

44.

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

Proverb, American

45.

Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

46.

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

47.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Penn, William

48.

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

49.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

50.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates