Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

Best Quotes about Books - reading

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

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

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

Hugo, Victor

The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.

Luther, Martin

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

Pascal, Blaise

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

Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.

Worsthorne, Sir Peregrine

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

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

Rohn, Jim

10.

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

Milton, John

11.

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.

Terry, Helen

12.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

13.

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Mansfield, Katherine

14.

A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.

Murray, William

15.

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

Forster, Edward M.

16.

The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.

Barstow, Stan

17.

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

18.

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

Camus, Albert

19.

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

20.

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

Gibbon, Edward

21.

Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.

Channing, William Ellery

22.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

23.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

24.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

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

26.

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

Proverb, American

27.

There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?

Tsvetaeva, Marina

28.

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

Dane, Frank

29.

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

Ruskin, John

30.

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

Auden, W. H.

31.

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

Maclennan, Hugh

32.

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

33.

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

Secondat, Charles de

34.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in it.

Byron, Lord

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Lee, Harper

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

44.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

45.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

46.

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

Mencken, H. L.

47.

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.

48.

The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

Faulkner, William

49.

He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.

Barrow

50.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

Marx, Groucho