Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Trollope, Anthony

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

Barstow, Stan

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

More, Hannah

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.

When the book comes out it may hurt you -- but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.

Baldwin, James

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

Spielberg, Steven

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

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

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

Hood, Thomas

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

10.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

11.

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

Phelps, William Lyon

12.

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

13.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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

Sandwell, B. K.

15.

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead.

Day, Clarence

16.

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

Lee, Spike

17.

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

Gissing, George Robert

18.

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

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

19.

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

20.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

21.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

22.

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

Vaneigem, Raoul

23.

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

24.

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

Twain, Mark

25.

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

26.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

27.

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

28.

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

Maclennan, Hugh

29.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

30.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

31.

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

32.

Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love for reading.

Choate, Rufus

33.

I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

Bevan, Aneurin

34.

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

35.

The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.

Crane, Frank

36.

A good book is the very essence of a good man. His virtues survive in it, while the foibles and faults of his actual life are forgotten. All the goodly company of the excellent and great sit around my table, or look down on me from yonder shelves, waiting patiently to answer my questions and enrich me with their wisdom. A precious book is a foretaste of immortality.

Cuyler, Theodore L.

37.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

Thackeray, William M.

38.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

39.

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

Luther, Martin

40.

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

41.

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

Kempis, Thomas

42.

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

43.

A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.

Neruda, Pablo

44.

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet -- if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.

Miller, Henry

45.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine -- everybody drinks water.

Twain, Mark

46.

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

Rohn, Jim

47.

A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.

Bradbury, Malcolm

48.

To read too many books is harmful.

Zedong, Mao

49.

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

Lee, Harper

50.

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

Forster, Edward M.