Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

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

Lawrence, D. H.

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

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

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

Forster, Edward M.

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

Gibbon, Edward

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book -- I'll waste no time reading it.

Hadas, Moses

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

10.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

11.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

12.

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

Pascal, Blaise

13.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

14.

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.

Porter, Noah

15.

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

16.

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in it.

Byron, Lord

17.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.

Temple, Sir William

21.

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.

Lawrence, D. H.

22.

The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.

Orwell, George

23.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

Thoreau, Henry David

24.

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''

25.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life --and one is as good as the other.

Hemingway, Ernest

26.

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

Luther, Martin

27.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

28.

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

Secondat, Charles de

29.

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

Twain, Mark

30.

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

31.

How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?

Shaw, George Bernard

32.

After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else.

Lawrence, D. H.

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.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

35.

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

More, Hannah

36.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.

Sandwell, B. K.

37.

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

Gibbon, Edward

38.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

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

Faulkner, William

40.

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

Vaneigem, Raoul

41.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

42.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

43.

A book might be written on the injustice of the just.

Hope, Anthony

44.

Everything in this book may be wrong. [The Savior's Manual]

Bach, Richard

45.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

46.

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.

47.

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.

48.

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

Lee, Spike

49.

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

50.

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