Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

- Channing, William Ellery

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Dawkins, John

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

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

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

Byron, Lord

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

Johnson, Samuel

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

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

Phelps, William Lyon

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Brodsky, Joseph

10.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Fielding, Henry

11.

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost always a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.

Mann, Horace

12.

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

13.

The book you don't read won't help.

Rohn, Jim

14.

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

Carlyle, Thomas

15.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

Hugo, Victor

17.

The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.

Brookner, Anita

18.

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

19.

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

Coolio

20.

Read Homer once, and you can read no more. For all books else appear so mean, and so poor. Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, and Homer will be all the books you need.

Buckingham, Duke of

21.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

22.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

23.

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.

24.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Penn, William

25.

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.

26.

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

Mccay, James T.

27.

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

Ruskin, John

28.

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

29.

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

Disney, Walt

30.

We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things -- the teacher of all truth.

Kingsley, Charles

31.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

32.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

33.

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

Rochman, Hazel

34.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

35.

She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.

Rhys, Jean

36.

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

Barrett, E.S.

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Bach, Richard

40.

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

Twain, Mark

41.

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

Spielberg, Steven

42.

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

43.

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

Wilde, Oscar

44.

'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

45.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

Bachelard, Gaston

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.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

48.

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.

49.

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''

50.

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

Temple, Sir William