Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

- Huxley, Aldous

Best Quotes about Books - reading

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Pound, Ezra

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

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

Ruskin, John

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Kieran, John

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

Rohn, Jim

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

Mencken, H. L.

She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.

Rhys, Jean

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Lee, Harper

10.

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

11.

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

Thurber, James

12.

Miss a meal if you have to, but don't miss a book.

Rohn, Jim

13.

The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.

Leacock, Stephen B.

14.

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

15.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

16.

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

Johnson, Samuel

17.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

18.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

Aubrey, John

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Gibbon, Edward

22.

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

Gibbon, Edward

23.

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

Ruskin, John

24.

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

Twain, Mark

25.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Chandler, Raymond

26.

The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.

Barrie, Sir James M.

27.

I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed -- and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.

Dawkins, John

28.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

29.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

Bachelard, Gaston

30.

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

Mccay, James T.

31.

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

Morely, John

32.

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

33.

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

Proverb, American

34.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.

Trevelyan, G. M.

35.

The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

Faulkner, William

36.

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

Hood, Thomas

37.

The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.

Benjamin, Walter

38.

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.

39.

A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.

Murray, William

40.

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.

Eco, Umberto

41.

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

42.

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

Milton, John

43.

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

44.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

Thoreau, Henry David

45.

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

46.

I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

47.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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