Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

For a good book has this quality, that it is not merely a petrifaction of its author, but that once it has been tossed behind, like Deucalion's little stone, it acquires a separate and vivid life of its own.

- Lejeune, Caroline

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

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.

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

Hugo, Victor

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

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

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

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

10.

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

11.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Carlyle, Thomas

12.

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

Frost, Robert

13.

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.

14.

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

Howells, William Dean

15.

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

16.

One sheds one's sicknesses in books -- repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.

Lawrence, D. H.

17.

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''

18.

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

19.

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

20.

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.

Terry, Helen

21.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

22.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

23.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

24.

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

Wycherley, William

25.

I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

Bevan, Aneurin

26.

A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.

Neruda, Pablo

27.

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

Dane, Frank

28.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.

Hemingway, Ernest

29.

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

Morely, John

30.

Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.

Rohn, Jim

31.

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.

Porter, Noah

32.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

33.

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

34.

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

35.

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

Wilde, Oscar

36.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

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

Pascal, Blaise

38.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.

Sandwell, B. K.

39.

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

Rohn, Jim

40.

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.

Harington, John

41.

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

Rohn, Jim

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

45.

In science read the newest works, in literature read the oldest.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

46.

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

47.

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

Descartes, Rene

48.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

49.

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

Mencken, H. L.

50.

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