Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

- Chambers, Robert

Best Quotes about Books - reading

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

Forster, Edward M.

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

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

More, Hannah

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Mccay, James T.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Johnson, Samuel

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Kieran, John

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

Wolfe, Thomas

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

Maclennan, Hugh

10.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

A novel points out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.

Carey, Joyce

15.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

16.

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.

Hugo, Victor

17.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

18.

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

Milton, John

19.

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

Joubert, Joseph

20.

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

21.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

22.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

24.

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

Howells, William Dean

25.

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

26.

What is the most precious, the most exciting smell awaiting you in the house when you return to it after a dozen years or so? The smell of roses, you think? No, moldering books.

Sinyavsky, Andre

27.

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

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.

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

Spielberg, Steven

30.

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

31.

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

32.

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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.

36.

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead.

Day, Clarence

37.

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

Rochman, Hazel

38.

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

Hope, Anthony

39.

How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?

Shaw, George Bernard

40.

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

Pound, Ezra

41.

Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.

Chambers, Oswald

42.

It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.

Hunt, Leigh

43.

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

44.

You are wise, witty and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of stuff.

Critchfield, Jim

45.

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

46.

A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You should live several lives while reading it.

Styron, William

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

50.

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

Mansfield, Katherine