Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

- Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

Best Quotes about Books - reading

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

Bruyere, Jean De La

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.

Lamb, Charles

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

Hadas, Moses

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

Thoreau, Henry David

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

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

Critchfield, Jim

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

10.

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

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

11.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Vaneigem, Raoul

12.

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

Mencken, H. L.

13.

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

14.

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

Asimov, Isaac

15.

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

Hood, Thomas

16.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

17.

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

Pound, Ezra

18.

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

Barrett, E.S.

19.

A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there -- that of the pulse, the heart beat.

Miller, Henry

20.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

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

Trollope, Anthony

22.

Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use.

Blackie, Professor

23.

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.

24.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

Fuentes, Carlos

25.

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

Carlyle, Thomas

26.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

27.

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

28.

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

Byron, Lord

29.

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

Hardwick, Elizabeth

32.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

33.

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

34.

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

Dane, Frank

35.

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

Mansfield, Katherine

36.

The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.

Leacock, Stephen B.

37.

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.

Temple, Sir William

38.

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

39.

Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.

Jackson, Holbrook

40.

A novel points out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.

Carey, Joyce

41.

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.

Lawrence, D. H.

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Bach, Richard

45.

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

Hubbard, Elbert

46.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

47.

An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.

Traherne, Thomas

48.

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

49.

Learning to read has been reduced to a process of mastering a series of narrow, specific, hierarchical skills. Where armed-forces recruits learn the components of a rifle or the intricacies of close order drill by the numbers, recruits to reading learn its mechanics sound by sound and word by word.

Gross, Jacquelyn

50.

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