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

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

Pound, Ezra

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

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.

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

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

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

Joubert, Joseph

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever.

Tupper, Martin

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

Gissing, George Robert

10.

There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.

Mencken, H. L.

11.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

12.

The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.

Barstow, Stan

13.

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

14.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

15.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

16.

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

Dane, Frank

17.

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

Byron, Lord

18.

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.

Fadiman, Clifton

19.

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

20.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine -- everybody drinks water.

Twain, Mark

21.

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

22.

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

Sandwell, B. K.

23.

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

Hugo, Victor

24.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

25.

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

26.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

27.

The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.

Orwell, George

28.

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

Disraeli, Benjamin

29.

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

30.

The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

31.

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

32.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

Belloc, Hilaire

33.

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.

Whitman, Walt

34.

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

Bach, Richard

35.

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

Goldsmith, Oliver

36.

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

Luther, Martin

37.

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

38.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

39.

Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.

Miller, Henry

40.

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

Twain, Mark

41.

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

42.

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

43.

The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.

Mencken, H. L.

44.

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

Forster, Edward M.

45.

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

Harington, John

46.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

47.

This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing.

Miller, Henry

48.

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Erasmus, Desiderius

49.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

Benjamin, Walter

50.

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