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

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

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

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

Asimov, Isaac

After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else.

Lawrence, D. H.

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.

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

Rohn, Jim

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Fuller, Margaret

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.

Spielberg, Steven

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

10.

The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.

Barrie, Sir James M.

11.

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

Mccay, James T.

12.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

13.

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

14.

God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

Channing, William Ellery

15.

This book is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.

Parker, Dorothy

16.

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

Barrett, E.S.

17.

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''

18.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

19.

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

Barstow, Stan

20.

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

Hood, Thomas

21.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Phelps, William Lyon

25.

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

26.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

27.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

28.

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

29.

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

Hunt, Leigh

30.

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

31.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring

Chappell, Warren

32.

A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever.

Tupper, Martin

33.

What is the most precious, the most exciting smell awaiting you in the house when you return to it after a dozen years or so? The smell of roses, you think? No, moldering books.

Sinyavsky, Andre

34.

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

35.

For a good book has this quality, that it is not merely a petrifaction of its author, but that once it has been tossed behind, like Deucalion's little stone, it acquires a separate and vivid life of its own.

Lejeune, Caroline

36.

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

Thurber, James

37.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

Twain, Mark

38.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

39.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

40.

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

Hugo, Victor

41.

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Locke, John

42.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Mallarme, Stephane

44.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

45.

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

46.

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

Voltaire

47.

Then I though of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

48.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

49.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

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