Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

A book that is shut is but a block.

- Fuller, Thomas

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Don't just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

Rohn, Jim

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.

Brookner, Anita

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

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Johnson, Samuel

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

Wesley, John

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

Twain, Mark

10.

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

Channing, William Ellery

11.

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

Pound, Ezra

12.

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

Jackson, Holbrook

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Twain, Mark

16.

Surviving and thriving as a professional today demands two new approaches to the written word. First, it requires a new approach to orchestrating information, by skillfully choosing what to read and what to ignore. Second, it requires a new approach to integrating information, by reading faster and with greater comprehension.

Calano, Jimmy

17.

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

18.

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

Vaneigem, Raoul

19.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

20.

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

Fuller, Margaret

21.

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

22.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

Butler, Samuel

23.

I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed -- and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.

Dawkins, John

24.

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

Gibbon, Edward

25.

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from the dead -- from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

Kingsley, Charles

26.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

27.

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

28.

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

Voltaire

29.

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

30.

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

31.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

32.

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

33.

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

Ruskin, John

34.

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

Brown, Les

35.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

36.

I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book.

Coolio

37.

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

38.

The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.

Barrie, Sir James M.

39.

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.

40.

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

41.

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

42.

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

43.

The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

44.

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

45.

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

46.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

47.

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

Phelps, William Lyon

48.

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

Kempis, Thomas

49.

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