Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about 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

She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.

Rhys, Jean

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

Lee, Harper

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

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

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

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

Ruskin, John

10.

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

11.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

12.

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

Bury, Richard De

13.

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason: they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. Those works, therefore, are the most valuable, that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation. understand them.

Clarendon

14.

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.

Whitman, Walt

15.

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.

16.

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

Hood, Thomas

17.

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

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

18.

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

19.

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

Blackie, Professor

20.

A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

Johnson, Samuel

21.

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

Rohn, Jim

22.

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

Rohn, Jim

23.

Surviving and thriving as a professional today demands two new approaches to the written word. First, it requires a new approach to orchestrating information, by skillfully choosing what to read and what to ignore. Second, it requires a new approach to integrating information, by reading faster and with greater comprehension.

Calano, Jimmy

24.

Begin to read a book that will help you move toward your dream.

Brown, Les

25.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

26.

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

30.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

31.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.

Trevelyan, G. M.

32.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

33.

One sheds one's sicknesses in books -- repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.

Lawrence, D. H.

34.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

35.

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

Goldsmith, Oliver

36.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

Mencken, H. L.

38.

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

Gibbon, Edward

39.

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

40.

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

41.

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

Ruskin, John

42.

What is important is not to be able to read rapidly, but to be able to decide what not to read.

Mccay, James T.

43.

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''

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.

Joubert, Joseph

48.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

49.

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.