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

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book -- I'll waste no time reading it.

Hadas, Moses

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

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

Bennett, Arnold

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.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

Aubrey, John

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Kieran, John

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

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

10.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

11.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

Thoreau, Henry David

12.

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

Pascal, Blaise

13.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

14.

Five daily newspapers arrive in my California driveway. The New York times and the Wall Street Journal are supplemented by three local papers. As for magazines, I read, or at least skim, Business Week, Forbes, The Economist, INC; Industry Week, Fortune. Other subscriptions include Sales and Marketing Management, Modern Health Care, Progressive Grocer, High Tech Business, and Slaon Management Review from MIT. I religiously read Business Tokyo, Asia Week, and Far Eastern Economic Review. I glance at Newsweek and Time ... but I devour the New Republic, Policy Review, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Monthly, and Public Interest. How about books? A dozen or more each month.

Peters, Thomas J.

15.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Woolf, Virginia

16.

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

Hugo, Victor

17.

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

Dane, Frank

18.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

19.

Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us -- never cease to instruct -- never cloy.

Colton, Charles Caleb

20.

The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine -- but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.

Keith, Sir Arthur

21.

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

Sandwell, B. K.

22.

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

Ruskin, John

23.

I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.

24.

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

25.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

26.

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

27.

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

Auden, W. H.

28.

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

29.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

30.

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

Hope, Anthony

31.

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

Forster, Edward M.

32.

This book is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.

Parker, Dorothy

33.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

34.

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

35.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

37.

'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

38.

Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.

Johnson

39.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

40.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

41.

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

Voltaire

42.

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

43.

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

Camus, Albert

44.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

Fuentes, Carlos

45.

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''

46.

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

Spielberg, Steven

47.

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

Brown, Les

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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