Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Bevan, Aneurin

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

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

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book --I call that vicious!

Nietzsche, Friedrich

The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy; The books that people talk about we never can recall; And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.

Wells, Carolyn

You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.

Lee, Spike

Books succeed, and lives fail.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

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

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

10.

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

11.

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

12.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

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.

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

15.

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

Lee, Harper

16.

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Erasmus, Desiderius

17.

Everything in this book may be wrong. [The Savior's Manual]

Bach, Richard

18.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

19.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

20.

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

Ruskin, John

21.

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

22.

What is the most precious, the most exciting smell awaiting you in the house when you return to it after a dozen years or so? The smell of roses, you think? No, moldering books.

Sinyavsky, Andre

23.

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

24.

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

Mallarme, Stephane

25.

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

Bruyere, Jean De La

26.

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

Lowell, James Russell

27.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

28.

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

29.

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

Brown, Les

30.

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in it.

Byron, Lord

31.

A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.

Cooley, Charles Horton

32.

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Fuller, Margaret

33.

Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use.

Blackie, Professor

34.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

35.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

37.

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

Voltaire

38.

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

39.

My books kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon.

Hood, Thomas

40.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

41.

Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

45.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Adler, Mortimer J.

46.

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Locke, John

47.

The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.

Brookner, Anita

48.

I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.

49.

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

Chappell, Warren

50.

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.