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

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.

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.

Eco, Umberto

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

Books succeed, and lives fail.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

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

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

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.

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

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

10.

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

Disney, Walt

11.

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

Luther, Martin

12.

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

13.

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

14.

Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.

Milton, John

15.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

16.

The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, The medicines of the soul.

Hood, Paxton

17.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

18.

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''

19.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

20.

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

Byron, Lord

21.

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

22.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

Lowell, James Russell

23.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

24.

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

Sandwell, B. K.

25.

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them.

Twain, Mark

26.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

McKenna, Richard

27.

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

Dane, Frank

28.

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

29.

Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.

Johnson

30.

The novel can't compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who's had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

31.

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

32.

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

Rostand, Jean

33.

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.

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.

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

Gibbon, Edward

36.

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

37.

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

Hadas, Moses

38.

Fielding, Henry

39.

Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

40.

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.

Lawrence, D. H.

41.

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.

Maugham, W. Somerset

42.

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

Temple, Sir William

43.

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

Forster, Edward M.

44.

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

45.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

46.

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

Kempis, Thomas

47.

Learning to read has been reduced to a process of mastering a series of narrow, specific, hierarchical skills. Where armed-forces recruits learn the components of a rifle or the intricacies of close order drill by the numbers, recruits to reading learn its mechanics sound by sound and word by word.

Gross, Jacquelyn

48.

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

Phelps, William Lyon

49.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

50.

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

Hugo, Victor