Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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''

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Rohn, Jim

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

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

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.

Fadiman, Clifton

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Jackson, Holbrook

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

Twain, Mark

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

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

Hadas, Moses

10.

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

11.

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a certain potency of life in them, to be as active as the soul whose progeny they are; they preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of the living intellect that bred them.

Milton, John

12.

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

13.

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

14.

What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.

Phillips, Wendell

15.

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

16.

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

Bruyere, Jean De La

17.

You are wise, witty and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of stuff.

Critchfield, Jim

18.

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

19.

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

Milton, John

20.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

Trollope, Anthony

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book.

Coolio

25.

A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new.

Mcluhan, Marshall

26.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

27.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

28.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Baker, Nicholson

32.

There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

Mencken, H. L.

33.

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

Rochman, Hazel

34.

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

Twain, Mark

35.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Brodsky, Joseph

36.

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

Luther, Martin

37.

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

38.

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

Tupper, Martin

39.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

40.

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

41.

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

42.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

Thoreau, Henry David

43.

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

Hood, Thomas

44.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

45.

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

Lee, Harper

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Hugo, Victor

50.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Adler, Mortimer J.