Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Critchfield, Jim

Best Quotes about Books - reading

A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.

Neruda, Pablo

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

Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.

Levine, Ghita

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

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.

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

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

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

Carlyle, Thomas

10.

You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.

Lee, Spike

11.

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

12.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

13.

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

Murray, William

14.

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

Dawkins, John

15.

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

16.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.

Trevelyan, G. M.

17.

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

18.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Kieran, John

19.

Begin to read a book that will help you move toward your dream.

Brown, Les

20.

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

21.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

22.

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

Chappell, Warren

23.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

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

25.

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

Trollope, Anthony

26.

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

Ruskin, John

27.

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

28.

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

29.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

30.

Books in a large university library system: 2, 000,000. Books in an average large city library: 1 0,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30, 000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20, 000.

Horowitz, Lois

31.

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

32.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

33.

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

34.

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

Hugo, Victor

35.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

36.

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.

Harington, John

37.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

38.

The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.

Proverb, American

39.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Mallarme, Stephane

40.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Chandler, Raymond

45.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

46.

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.

47.

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