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

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

Huxley, Aldous

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

Seferis, Giorgos

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book --I call that vicious!

Nietzsche, Friedrich

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from the dead -- from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

Kingsley, Charles

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Woolf, Virginia

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

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

Rohn, Jim

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

10.

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

11.

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

12.

You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.

Lee, Spike

13.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

14.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

15.

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

16.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

17.

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations -- such is pleasure beyond compare.

Kenko, Yoshida

18.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

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.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Brodsky, Joseph

21.

I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.

Phelps, William Lyon

22.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

23.

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

Forster, Edward M.

24.

The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy; The books that people talk about we never can recall; And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.

Wells, Carolyn

25.

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

Hadas, Moses

26.

In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.

Rosten, Leo

27.

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

Wilde, Oscar

28.

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

Temple, Sir William

29.

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

30.

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

Mencken, H. L.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

34.

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

35.

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

Critchfield, Jim

36.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

37.

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

Rohn, Jim

38.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

39.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.

Sandwell, B. K.

40.

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought -- asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

Collier, Jeremy

41.

It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along the shore.

Fuller, Margaret

42.

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

Forster, Edward M.

43.

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

Maclennan, Hugh

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

49.

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

Barrett, E.S.

50.

Books in a large university library system: 2, 000,000. Books in an average large city library: 1 0,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30, 000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20, 000.

Horowitz, Lois