Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with all the finest men of past centuries.

- Descartes, Rene

Best Quotes about Books - reading

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

Wilde, Oscar

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

Wycherley, William

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

Trollope, Anthony

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

Twain, Mark

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

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

10.

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.

Maugham, W. Somerset

11.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

12.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Chandler, Raymond

13.

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

14.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Fielding, Henry

15.

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

Johnson, Samuel

16.

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

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

17.

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

Hunt, Leigh

18.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

19.

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

20.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Barrett, E.S.

21.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

22.

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

Disraeli, Benjamin

23.

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

Byron, Lord

24.

Very young children eat their books, literally devouring their contents. This is one reason for the scarcity of first editions of Alice in Wonderland and other favorites of the nursery.

Rosenbach, A. S. W.

25.

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.

Burgess, Anthony

26.

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

27.

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

28.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

29.

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

Hood, Thomas

30.

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

31.

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

32.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with all the finest men of past centuries.

Descartes, Rene

33.

You will be the same person in five as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.

Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''

34.

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

Lee, Harper

35.

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

Luther, Martin

36.

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

37.

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

Mencken, H. L.

38.

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

Channing, William Ellery

39.

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

Asimov, Isaac

40.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch.

Steele, Sir Richard

41.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

42.

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

Morely, John

43.

Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us -- never cease to instruct -- never cloy.

Colton, Charles Caleb

44.

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

Camus, Albert

45.

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

46.

Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

47.

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

Brookner, Anita

48.

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

49.

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading! Take them out of this book, for instance, --you might as well take the book along with them; --one cold external winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer; --he steps forth like a bridegroom, --bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.

Sterne, Laurence

50.

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

Kempis, Thomas