Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Hope, Anthony

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Mencken, H. L.

Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love for reading.

Choate, Rufus

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.

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

Lowell, James Russell

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

Joubert, Joseph

Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use.

Blackie, Professor

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

Twain, Mark

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

10.

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

11.

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost always a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.

Mann, Horace

12.

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

Baker, Nicholson

13.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

Butler, Samuel

14.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

15.

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

Hood, Thomas

16.

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.

Worsthorne, Sir Peregrine

18.

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

Lee, Spike

19.

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

20.

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.

Kirk, E.N.

21.

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

Barrett, E.S.

22.

The novel can't compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who's had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

23.

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

24.

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

Carey, Joyce

25.

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

Ruskin, John

26.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.

Berger, John

27.

The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.

Proverb, American

28.

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

Tupper, Martin

29.

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

Frost, Robert

30.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

31.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

32.

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

33.

I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.

34.

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

Mencken, H. L.

35.

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

36.

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

37.

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

Kempis, Thomas

38.

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

39.

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

Bach, Richard

40.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

41.

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

42.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Asimov, Isaac

43.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

44.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

45.

What is important is not to be able to read rapidly, but to be able to decide what not to read.

Mccay, James T.

46.

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

Gibbon, Edward

47.

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

Wolfe, Thomas

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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