Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.

- Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason: they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. Those works, therefore, are the most valuable, that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation. understand them.

Clarendon

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.

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

Twain, Mark

The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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

Dane, Frank

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

Jackson, Holbrook

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

Townsend, Atwood H.

Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.

Johnson

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

Lawrence, D. H.

10.

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

11.

Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

Trollope, Anthony

12.

He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.

Barrow

13.

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought -- asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

Collier, Jeremy

14.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

15.

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

Hugo, Victor

16.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring

Chappell, Warren

17.

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

18.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

19.

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

Wilde, Oscar

20.

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

Harington, John

21.

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

Balfour, Arthur James

22.

Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read.

23.

The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, The medicines of the soul.

Hood, Paxton

24.

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

25.

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

Mencken, H. L.

26.

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

27.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Chandler, Raymond

28.

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

Wycherley, William

29.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

30.

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

Porter, Noah

31.

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

32.

The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine -- but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.

Keith, Sir Arthur

33.

A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.

Murray, William

34.

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

Howells, William Dean

35.

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

Wesley, John

36.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

37.

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

38.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

39.

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.

40.

Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.

Baker, Nicholson

41.

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

Twain, Mark

42.

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.

43.

Read Homer once, and you can read no more. For all books else appear so mean, and so poor. Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, and Homer will be all the books you need.

Buckingham, Duke of

44.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

45.

For a good book has this quality, that it is not merely a petrifaction of its author, but that once it has been tossed behind, like Deucalion's little stone, it acquires a separate and vivid life of its own.

Lejeune, Caroline

46.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

47.

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

Maclennan, Hugh

48.

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

Channing, William Ellery

49.

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

50.

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

Belloc, Hilaire