Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

- Fuentes, Carlos

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.

Lamb, Charles

Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.

Chambers, Oswald

A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there -- that of the pulse, the heart beat.

Miller, Henry

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

Spielberg, Steven

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

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

Dane, Frank

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

Whipple, Edwin P.

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

10.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

11.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

13.

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

Hunt, Leigh

14.

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

15.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with all the finest men of past centuries.

Descartes, Rene

16.

If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that.

Carlyle, Thomas

17.

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

Twain, Mark

18.

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.

19.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

20.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

Edwards, Tryon

21.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Adler, Mortimer J.

22.

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

23.

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

24.

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.

Fadiman, Clifton

25.

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

26.

The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.

Leacock, Stephen B.

27.

This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing.

Miller, Henry

28.

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

Luther, Martin

29.

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

30.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

Hazlitt, William

31.

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

32.

Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.

Jackson, Holbrook

33.

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

Gibbon, Edward

34.

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

Adler, Mortimer J.

35.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

36.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Kieran, John

37.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

Belloc, Hilaire

38.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

39.

Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read.

40.

I've never know any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Secondat, Charles de

41.

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

42.

Begin to read a book that will help you move toward your dream.

Brown, Les

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

47.

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

48.

Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.

Baker, Nicholson

49.

A book is like a man -- clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

Steinbeck, John

50.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.