Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Dawkins, John

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.

Swartz, J.

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

Critchfield, Jim

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

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

It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.

Hunt, Leigh

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

Forster, Edward M.

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

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

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

10.

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

11.

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.

12.

In any situation, ask yourself: What strengths do I possess that can contribute towards accomplishing something in this situation? Then follow through.

13.

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

14.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

Bachelard, Gaston

15.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

16.

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

Maclennan, Hugh

17.

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.

18.

What is the most precious, the most exciting smell awaiting you in the house when you return to it after a dozen years or so? The smell of roses, you think? No, moldering books.

Sinyavsky, Andre

19.

A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You should live several lives while reading it.

Styron, William

20.

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

Pascal, Blaise

21.

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

22.

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

23.

The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

24.

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.

25.

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

Twain, Mark

26.

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

Spielberg, Steven

27.

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

28.

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

Chambers, Oswald

29.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

30.

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

31.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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

Auden, W. H.

33.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

34.

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

Hood, Thomas

35.

What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.

Carlyle, Thomas

36.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

37.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

38.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

39.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Lee, Harper

40.

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

41.

Miss a meal if you have to, but don't miss a book.

Rohn, Jim

42.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

Edwards, Tryon

43.

I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

44.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

45.

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

Hadas, Moses

46.

I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book.

Coolio

47.

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

48.

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

Kempis, Thomas

49.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

50.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo