Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

- Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

Best Quotes about Books - reading

I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.

Levine, Ghita

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.

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

Adler, Mortimer J.

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

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

Howells, William Dean

The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.

Barstow, Stan

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

10.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

11.

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.

Harington, John

12.

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.

13.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

14.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

15.

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

Hope, Anthony

16.

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

Twain, Mark

17.

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

Blackie, Professor

18.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Kieran, John

19.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

20.

Read, read, read. Read everything-- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

Faulkner, William

21.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

22.

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

Murray, William

23.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Barrett, E.S.

24.

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

Kempis, Thomas

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

28.

Very young children eat their books, literally devouring their contents. This is one reason for the scarcity of first editions of Alice in Wonderland and other favorites of the nursery.

Rosenbach, A. S. W.

29.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with all the finest men of past centuries.

Descartes, Rene

30.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

31.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.

Hemingway, Ernest

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

36.

I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.

Phelps, William Lyon

37.

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

38.

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

39.

To read too many books is harmful.

Zedong, Mao

40.

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

41.

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

42.

I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book.

Coolio

43.

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.

Rochman, Hazel

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

Bury, Richard De

47.

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

48.

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

Tupper, Martin

49.

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

Pascal, Blaise

50.

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

Gibbon, Edward