Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Bevan, Aneurin

Best Quotes about Books - reading

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

Dane, Frank

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

Rohn, Jim

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

Bachelard, Gaston

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.

Jackson, Holbrook

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

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

Jefferson, Thomas

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.

10.

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.

11.

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

Faulkner, William

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

Byron, Lord

16.

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

Hadas, Moses

17.

Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us -- never cease to instruct -- never cloy.

Colton, Charles Caleb

18.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

Thurber, James

23.

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.

Porter, Noah

24.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

25.

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

Ruskin, John

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Spielberg, Steven

30.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

Thoreau, Henry David

31.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

32.

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

Brown, Les

33.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

34.

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

35.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

36.

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading! Take them out of this book, for instance, --you might as well take the book along with them; --one cold external winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer; --he steps forth like a bridegroom, --bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.

Sterne, Laurence

37.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

38.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

39.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

40.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

41.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

42.

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

43.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

Thoreau, Henry David

44.

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.

45.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

46.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

47.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

48.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

49.

A book is like a man -- clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

Steinbeck, John

50.

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