Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Hunt, Leigh

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from the dead -- from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

Kingsley, Charles

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

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

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

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

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

Twain, Mark

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

Gibbon, Edward

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

10.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

11.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

12.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

13.

The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

14.

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

Lee, Spike

15.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

16.

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

17.

The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

Hardwick, Elizabeth

18.

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

Joubert, Joseph

19.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Locke, John

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.

Temple, Sir William

27.

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

Hubbard, Elbert

28.

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

29.

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book -- I'll waste no time reading it.

Hadas, Moses

30.

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

31.

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

Howells, William Dean

32.

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

Rohn, Jim

33.

Books succeed, and lives fail.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

34.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

35.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

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.

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

Gibbon, Edward

38.

A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.

Cooley, Charles Horton

39.

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

40.

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

Fuller, Margaret

41.

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

Frost, Robert

42.

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

Asimov, Isaac

43.

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

Ruskin, John

44.

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

Baker, Nicholson

45.

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

46.

A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there -- that of the pulse, the heart beat.

Miller, Henry

47.

Books in a large university library system: 2, 000,000. Books in an average large city library: 1 0,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30, 000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20, 000.

Horowitz, Lois

48.

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

Hugo, Victor

49.

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.

Marcel, Anthony

50.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward