Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

- Carlyle, Thomas

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Ruskin, John

There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

Mencken, H. L.

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

Butler, Samuel

The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it --when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.

Rushdie, Salman

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

Milton, John

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

Whipple, Edwin P.

Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.

Baker, Nicholson

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

Forster, Edward M.

10.

I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

Bevan, Aneurin

11.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.

Lamb, Charles

12.

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.

Eco, Umberto

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.

In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.

Rosten, Leo

15.

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

16.

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

17.

You will be the same person in five as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.

Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''

18.

The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.

Crane, Frank

19.

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

20.

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Pound, Ezra

21.

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

Voltaire

22.

Learning to read has been reduced to a process of mastering a series of narrow, specific, hierarchical skills. Where armed-forces recruits learn the components of a rifle or the intricacies of close order drill by the numbers, recruits to reading learn its mechanics sound by sound and word by word.

Gross, Jacquelyn

23.

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

24.

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

Dawkins, John

25.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

26.

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Fuller, Margaret

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.

Worsthorne, Sir Peregrine

30.

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

31.

In any situation, ask yourself: What strengths do I possess that can contribute towards accomplishing something in this situation? Then follow through.

32.

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

Phillips, Wendell

33.

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

Murray, William

34.

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

35.

In science read the newest works, in literature read the oldest.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

36.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

40.

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

Kempis, Thomas

41.

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

42.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

43.

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

Lee, Harper

44.

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

45.

After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else.

Lawrence, D. H.

46.

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

47.

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

Channing, William Ellery

48.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Camus, Albert

49.

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

50.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert