Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

- Gissing, George Robert

Best Quotes about Books - reading

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

Marx, Groucho

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

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

Channing, William Ellery

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

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

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.

Hugo, Victor

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Eliot, George

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.

10.

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

Carey, Joyce

11.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

12.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

13.

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

Phelps, William Lyon

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

17.

This book is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.

Parker, Dorothy

18.

My books kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon.

Hood, Thomas

19.

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

20.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

21.

What is the most precious, the most exciting smell awaiting you in the house when you return to it after a dozen years or so? The smell of roses, you think? No, moldering books.

Sinyavsky, Andre

22.

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

Luther, Martin

23.

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.

Rochman, Hazel

24.

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

Jackson, Holbrook

25.

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

26.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Barrett, E.S.

27.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

28.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

29.

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

Lowell, James Russell

30.

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

Voltaire

31.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

32.

An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.

Traherne, Thomas

33.

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

34.

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

Gibbon, Edward

35.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Carlyle, Thomas

36.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Mallarme, Stephane

37.

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

38.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

39.

You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.

Kump, Peter

40.

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

41.

One sheds one's sicknesses in books -- repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.

Lawrence, D. H.

42.

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

Wesley, John

43.

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

Carlyle, Thomas

44.

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

45.

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

Kempis, Thomas

46.

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

47.

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

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

48.

I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.

Levine, Ghita

49.

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.

Marcel, Anthony

50.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur