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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Chandler, Raymond

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.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

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.

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

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

Hubbard, Elbert

10.

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

Locke, John

11.

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

12.

Books succeed, and lives fail.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

13.

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

14.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

15.

Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.

Chambers, Oswald

16.

You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.

Kump, Peter

17.

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

Forster, Edward M.

18.

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

Barrett, E.S.

19.

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

20.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

21.

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

Marcel, Anthony

22.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

23.

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

24.

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

Temple, Sir William

25.

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

26.

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

27.

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

Lee, Harper

28.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

30.

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

Carey, Joyce

31.

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

32.

This book is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.

Parker, Dorothy

33.

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

34.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

Thackeray, William M.

35.

Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

36.

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

37.

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

38.

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

Seferis, Giorgos

39.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with all the finest men of past centuries.

Descartes, Rene

40.

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

Rochman, Hazel

41.

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

Carlyle, Thomas

42.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

43.

He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.

Barrow

44.

The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, The medicines of the soul.

Hood, Paxton

45.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Fielding, Henry

46.

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

Mccay, James T.

47.

The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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