Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Hope, Anthony

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Locke, John

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.

Swartz, J.

I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.

Phelps, William Lyon

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

Secondat, Charles de

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

Byron, Lord

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

10.

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.

Terry, Helen

11.

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

12.

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

Dane, Frank

13.

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

14.

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

Twain, Mark

15.

You will find most books worth reading are worth reading twice.

Morely, John

16.

The book you don't read won't help.

Rohn, Jim

17.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

18.

A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.

Bradbury, Malcolm

19.

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

20.

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

Luther, Martin

21.

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

Wycherley, William

22.

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

23.

Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.

Johnson

24.

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

Twain, Mark

25.

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations -- such is pleasure beyond compare.

Kenko, Yoshida

26.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

Lincoln, Abraham

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

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''

30.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

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

Tupper, Martin

35.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

36.

Learning to read has been reduced to a process of mastering a series of narrow, specific, hierarchical skills. Where armed-forces recruits learn the components of a rifle or the intricacies of close order drill by the numbers, recruits to reading learn its mechanics sound by sound and word by word.

Gross, Jacquelyn

37.

God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

Channing, William Ellery

38.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Carlyle, Thomas

39.

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

40.

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

Voltaire

41.

The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.

Brookner, Anita

42.

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading! Take them out of this book, for instance, --you might as well take the book along with them; --one cold external winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer; --he steps forth like a bridegroom, --bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.

Sterne, Laurence

43.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

44.

A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.

Brooke, Rupert

45.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

46.

To read too many books is harmful.

Zedong, Mao

47.

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

Kempis, Thomas

48.

This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing.

Miller, Henry

49.

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

50.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius