Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Hood, Thomas

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

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

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

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

Hugo, Victor

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

Johnson, Samuel

There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?

Tsvetaeva, Marina

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

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

10.

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet -- if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.

Miller, Henry

11.

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.

Joubert, Joseph

12.

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

13.

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

Hugo, Victor

14.

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

15.

Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Maclennan, Hugh

19.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

20.

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Erasmus, Desiderius

21.

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

22.

You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.

Ruskin, John

23.

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

24.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

25.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

26.

There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.

Mencken, H. L.

27.

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

28.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

29.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

30.

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

Vaneigem, Raoul

31.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

32.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Luther, Martin

36.

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

37.

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

38.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

39.

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

Fuller, Margaret

40.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

Benjamin, Walter

41.

Books succeed, and lives fail.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

42.

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality -- the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

Benson, Arthur Christopher

43.

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

Lee, Spike

44.

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

Bury, Richard De

45.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

46.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.

Hemingway, Ernest

47.

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

Rohn, Jim

48.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

49.

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

Tupper, Martin

50.

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