Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Fuller, Margaret

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

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.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Chandler, Raymond

Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use.

Blackie, Professor

What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.

Phillips, Wendell

10.

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

11.

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

Channing, William Ellery

12.

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

Critchfield, Jim

13.

I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.

14.

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

15.

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

Barstow, Stan

16.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

17.

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

Mencken, H. L.

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.

Terry, Helen

22.

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.

23.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

Ruskin, John

24.

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.

Joubert, Joseph

25.

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

Gibbon, Edward

26.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

28.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

29.

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

Twain, Mark

30.

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

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

31.

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

Rohn, Jim

32.

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

Byron, Lord

33.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

34.

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

35.

A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

36.

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

Leacock, Stephen B.

37.

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

Kempis, Thomas

38.

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

Descartes, Rene

39.

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

Mccay, James T.

40.

The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

Faulkner, William

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

44.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

Thoreau, Henry David

45.

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

46.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

47.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

48.

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

49.

A book worth reading is worth buying.