Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

- Butler, Samuel

Best Quotes about Books - reading

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

Balfour, Arthur James

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

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

Gibbon, Edward

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

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.

Disney, Walt

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

Jackson, Holbrook

The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.

Barrie, Sir James M.

Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.

Milton, John

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

Mansfield, Katherine

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

13.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

14.

Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.

Channing, William Ellery

15.

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

Twain, Mark

16.

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought -- asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

Collier, Jeremy

17.

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

18.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

19.

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

20.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

21.

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

Pascal, Blaise

22.

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

Rochman, Hazel

23.

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

Lee, Harper

24.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

25.

When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.

Geneen, Harold S.

26.

If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that.

Carlyle, Thomas

27.

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

28.

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.

29.

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.

Burgess, Anthony

30.

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

Spielberg, Steven

31.

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

32.

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

Marcel, Anthony

33.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

Benjamin, Walter

34.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

35.

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

Phillips, Wendell

36.

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.

37.

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

38.

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

Chambers, Oswald

39.

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

40.

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

Bennett, Arnold

41.

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

42.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

43.

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

44.

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

45.

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

Twain, Mark

46.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

47.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

Maclennan, Hugh

48.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

49.

A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there -- that of the pulse, the heart beat.

Miller, Henry

50.

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

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley