Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality -- the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

- Benson, Arthur Christopher

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 the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.

Rosten, Leo

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

Howells, William Dean

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

More, Hannah

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

Wycherley, William

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

Ruskin, John

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

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

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

Bevan, Aneurin

10.

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

Forster, Edward M.

11.

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book -- I'll waste no time reading it.

Hadas, Moses

12.

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

Gibbon, Edward

13.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

14.

A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.

Brooke, Rupert

15.

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

Carlyle, Thomas

16.

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

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

17.

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.

Kirk, E.N.

18.

The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

19.

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

20.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

21.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

22.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.

Trevelyan, G. M.

23.

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

Wilde, Oscar

24.

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

25.

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

26.

The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.

Leacock, Stephen B.

27.

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

Gissing, George Robert

28.

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.

29.

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

Whipple, Edwin P.

30.

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.

31.

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

Brodsky, Joseph

32.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

33.

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

34.

Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

Trollope, Anthony

35.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

36.

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

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.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Fielding, Henry

39.

A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.

Bradbury, Malcolm

40.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

41.

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

Hope, Anthony

42.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

43.

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

44.

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

Disney, Walt

45.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

46.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

47.

A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.

Neruda, Pablo

48.

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

49.

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

Sandwell, B. K.

50.

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

Kempis, Thomas