Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Byron, Lord

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

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

The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, The medicines of the soul.

Hood, Paxton

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

Wilde, Oscar

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love for reading.

Choate, Rufus

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

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

Murray, William

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.

10.

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

Rochman, Hazel

11.

This book is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.

Parker, Dorothy

12.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

13.

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

14.

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality -- the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

Benson, Arthur Christopher

15.

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

16.

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

Ruskin, John

17.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

19.

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

Luther, Martin

20.

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.

21.

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

Kempis, Thomas

22.

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

Coolio

23.

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

24.

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.

Joubert, Joseph

25.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch.

Steele, Sir Richard

26.

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

Ruskin, John

27.

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.

28.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

29.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Frost, Robert

34.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

Huxley, Aldous

35.

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

Hood, Thomas

36.

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.

Temple, Sir William

37.

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

38.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

39.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

40.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

41.

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

Wesley, John

42.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

43.

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

Chappell, Warren

44.

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

Phelps, William Lyon

45.

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

Bach, Richard

46.

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

47.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

48.

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

Trollope, Anthony

49.

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a certain potency of life in them, to be as active as the soul whose progeny they are; they preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of the living intellect that bred them.

Milton, John

50.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.

Sandwell, B. K.