Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Howells, William Dean

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

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.

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

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Woolf, Virginia

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.

Rochman, Hazel

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

Disney, Walt

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

10.

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

11.

Very young children eat their books, literally devouring their contents. This is one reason for the scarcity of first editions of Alice in Wonderland and other favorites of the nursery.

Rosenbach, A. S. W.

12.

To read too many books is harmful.

Zedong, Mao

13.

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

14.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.

Disney, Walt

15.

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

16.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

17.

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

18.

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

Jackson, Holbrook

19.

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.

Spielberg, Steven

20.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Camus, Albert

21.

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

Pound, Ezra

22.

When the book comes out it may hurt you -- but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.

Baldwin, James

23.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

24.

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

Wilde, Oscar

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.

Begin to read a book that will help you move toward your dream.

Brown, Les

27.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

28.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Eliot, George

29.

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

30.

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

Ruskin, John

31.

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

32.

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

Gibbon, Edward

33.

A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

Johnson, Samuel

34.

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

35.

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

36.

Read, read, read. Read everything-- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

Faulkner, William

37.

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

Joubert, Joseph

38.

If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.

Davies, Robertson

39.

It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.

Hunt, Leigh

40.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

Fuentes, Carlos

41.

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

42.

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

Forster, Edward M.

43.

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

Forster, Edward M.

44.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

45.

'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

46.

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

Fuller, Margaret

47.

Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.

Milton, John

48.

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

Twain, Mark

49.

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

50.

We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things -- the teacher of all truth.

Kingsley, Charles