Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

- Goldsmith, Oliver

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

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

Wesley, John

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

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.

Rohn, Jim

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

Maclennan, Hugh

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

Belloc, Hilaire

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

10.

You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.

Lee, Spike

11.

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

12.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

13.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.

Trevelyan, G. M.

14.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

15.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

16.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Camus, Albert

17.

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

18.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

19.

A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever.

Tupper, Martin

20.

Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

21.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

22.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

23.

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

24.

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

Bennett, Arnold

25.

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

Chambers, Oswald

26.

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

27.

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''

28.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

29.

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

30.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

Frost, Robert

31.

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

32.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Lee, Harper

34.

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

35.

Then I though of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

36.

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

Howells, William Dean

37.

She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.

Rhys, Jean

38.

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

39.

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

Coolio

40.

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

Colton, Charles Caleb

41.

Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.

Miller, Henry

42.

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

Auden, W. H.

43.

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

Bruyere, Jean De La

44.

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

45.

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.

Harington, John

46.

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

47.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

48.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

49.

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

Pound, Ezra

50.

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