Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

Best Quotes about Books - reading

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

Adler, Mortimer J.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

Lowell, James Russell

Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.

Rohn, Jim

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Kieran, John

The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.

Benjamin, Walter

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

Dane, Frank

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

Parker, Dorothy

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Eliot, George

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

10.

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

11.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

12.

A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.

Cooley, Charles Horton

13.

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

14.

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

Trollope, Anthony

15.

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Pound, Ezra

16.

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

Pound, Ezra

17.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

18.

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

Gibbon, Edward

19.

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

Lee, Spike

20.

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

21.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

22.

A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.

Bradbury, Malcolm

23.

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

Whipple, Edwin P.

24.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

25.

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.

Porter, Noah

26.

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

Brookner, Anita

27.

Don't just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

Rohn, Jim

28.

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

Dawkins, John

29.

What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.

Phillips, Wendell

30.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

31.

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

32.

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

33.

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

34.

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

Critchfield, Jim

35.

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

36.

Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books. Quick, quick! Fling Peregrine Pickle under the toilette --throw Roderick Random into the closet --put The Innocent Adultery into The Whole Duty of Man; thrust Lord Aimworth under the sofa! cram Ovid behind the bolster; there --put The Man of Feeling into your pocket. Now for them.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

37.

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

Howells, William Dean

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

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

Chappell, Warren

41.

The book you don't read won't help.

Rohn, Jim

42.

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

Wolfe, Thomas

43.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

44.

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

Sandwell, B. K.

45.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

46.

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

47.

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

48.

It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along the shore.

Fuller, Margaret

49.

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

Maclennan, Hugh

50.

A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new.

Mcluhan, Marshall