Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Ruskin, John

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

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

Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

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

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

Hubbard, Elbert

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

Wycherley, William

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

Mallarme, Stephane

10.

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

11.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

12.

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

Twain, Mark

13.

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

Frost, Robert

14.

Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

Wesley, John

15.

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.

Marcel, Anthony

16.

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

17.

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

Luther, Martin

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

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

20.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

21.

I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed -- and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.

Dawkins, John

22.

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.

23.

The novel can't compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who's had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

24.

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

25.

Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.

Miller, Henry

26.

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

Morely, John

27.

A good book is the very essence of a good man. His virtues survive in it, while the foibles and faults of his actual life are forgotten. All the goodly company of the excellent and great sit around my table, or look down on me from yonder shelves, waiting patiently to answer my questions and enrich me with their wisdom. A precious book is a foretaste of immortality.

Cuyler, Theodore L.

28.

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

29.

A novel points out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.

Carey, Joyce

30.

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

Phillips, Wendell

31.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

32.

Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.

Johnson

33.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

34.

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

Pascal, Blaise

35.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

36.

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

Trollope, Anthony

37.

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.

38.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

39.

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

40.

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

Tupper, Martin

41.

A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.

Murray, William

42.

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost always a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.

Mann, Horace

43.

The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.

Orwell, George

44.

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

45.

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

Lowell, James Russell

46.

The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.

Mencken, H. L.

47.

If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.

Davies, Robertson

48.

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

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

49.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

50.

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

Hugo, Victor