Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.

Rohn, Jim

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

Dane, Frank

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

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Tupper, Martin

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

Thackeray, William M.

Then I though of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

10.

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

Brookner, Anita

11.

In science, read by preference the newest works. In literature, read the oldest. The classics are always modern.

Lytton, Lord Edward

12.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

13.

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.

14.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

15.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor is any pleasure so lasting.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

16.

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

Spielberg, Steven

17.

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

18.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

Marx, Groucho

19.

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

20.

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

Dawkins, John

21.

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Mansfield, Katherine

22.

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

23.

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them.

Twain, Mark

24.

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

Ruskin, John

25.

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

26.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

27.

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

Byron, Lord

28.

The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

29.

What is important is not to be able to read rapidly, but to be able to decide what not to read.

Mccay, James T.

30.

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

Hugo, Victor

31.

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

Blackie, Professor

32.

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

33.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.

Berger, John

34.

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

35.

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

Colton, Charles Caleb

36.

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

Pascal, Blaise

37.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

38.

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