Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

- Fielding, Henry

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

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

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

Mansfield, Katherine

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

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

Locke, John

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

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.

Harington, John

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

Hugo, Victor

10.

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

11.

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

Dane, Frank

12.

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.

13.

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

Barstow, Stan

14.

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

Critchfield, Jim

15.

Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.

Channing, William Ellery

16.

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

Vaneigem, Raoul

17.

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

Ruskin, John

18.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

19.

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

Whipple, Edwin P.

20.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

21.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Penn, William

25.

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.

26.

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.

Kirk, E.N.

27.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency --the belief that the here and now is all there is.

Bloom, Allan

28.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

29.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

Mccosh

30.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

31.

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

Carey, Joyce

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.

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

Luther, Martin

34.

Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

Wesley, John

35.

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.

Burgess, Anthony

36.

Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

37.

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

38.

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

Hunt, Leigh

39.

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

40.

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

Twain, Mark

41.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

46.

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

47.

A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.

Murray, William

48.

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

Wilde, Oscar

49.

The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.

Mencken, H. L.

50.

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.

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