Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Dane, Frank

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

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

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Locke, John

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

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

Johnson, Samuel

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

Milton, John

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

Frost, Robert

Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman other or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.

Eagleton, Terry

10.

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.

11.

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from the dead -- from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

Kingsley, Charles

12.

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

Brookner, Anita

13.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

14.

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

Twain, Mark

15.

My books kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon.

Hood, Thomas

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Pound, Ezra

19.

You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.

Kump, Peter

20.

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

21.

You will find most books worth reading are worth reading twice.

Morely, John

22.

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

Mencken, H. L.

23.

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

Balfour, Arthur James

24.

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

Kempis, Thomas

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Read, read, read. Read everything-- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

Faulkner, William

28.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

29.

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

Pascal, Blaise

30.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

31.

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

32.

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

33.

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

Hugo, Victor

34.

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

35.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

36.

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

Hugo, Victor

37.

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

38.

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

Parker, Dorothy

39.

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

Bach, Richard

40.

When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.

Geneen, Harold S.

41.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Asimov, Isaac

42.

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

43.

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.

Marcel, Anthony

44.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

45.

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.

Carter, Angela

46.

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

Whipple, Edwin P.

47.

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

Ruskin, John

48.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

49.

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

Camus, Albert

50.

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.