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

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, Lighthouses as the poet said erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Hadas, Moses

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

Proverb, American

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations -- such is pleasure beyond compare.

Kenko, Yoshida

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a certain potency of life in them, to be as active as the soul whose progeny they are; they preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of the living intellect that bred them.

Milton, John

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

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

Forster, Edward M.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor is any pleasure so lasting.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

10.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

Lincoln, Abraham

11.

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

Ruskin, John

12.

If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.

Davies, Robertson

13.

I've never know any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Secondat, Charles de

14.

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

Camus, Albert

15.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Adler, Mortimer J.

16.

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

Colton, Charles Caleb

17.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

18.

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

Parker, Dorothy

19.

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book --I call that vicious!

Nietzsche, Friedrich

20.

Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.

Morely, John

21.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

Thackeray, William M.

22.

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

Bach, Richard

23.

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

Twain, Mark

24.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

25.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

Maclennan, Hugh

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.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

28.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

McKenna, Richard

29.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

Twain, Mark

30.

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

Wilde, Oscar

31.

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

Critchfield, Jim

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Brookner, Anita

35.

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.

36.

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

Chappell, Warren

37.

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.

Kirk, E.N.

38.

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

Rostand, Jean

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.

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

41.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

42.

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

Brown, Les

43.

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

44.

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

Hugo, Victor

45.

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

46.

Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.

Chambers, Oswald

47.

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

Mencken, H. L.

48.

In science read the newest works, in literature read the oldest.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

49.

For a good book has this quality, that it is not merely a petrifaction of its author, but that once it has been tossed behind, like Deucalion's little stone, it acquires a separate and vivid life of its own.

Lejeune, Caroline

50.

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