Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

- Martineau, Harriet

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

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

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

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

Phillips, Wendell

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

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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 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

10.

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

11.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

12.

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

Ruskin, John

13.

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

Rohn, Jim

14.

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

15.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor is any pleasure so lasting.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

16.

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

17.

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

Lee, Spike

18.

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

19.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

20.

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.

Whitman, Walt

21.

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

22.

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

Colton, Charles Caleb

23.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

24.

If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.

Davies, Robertson

25.

The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.

Crane, Frank

26.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

27.

Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

Wesley, John

28.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

29.

I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.

Levine, Ghita

30.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

31.

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

32.

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

Temple, Sir William

33.

What is the most precious, the most exciting smell awaiting you in the house when you return to it after a dozen years or so? The smell of roses, you think? No, moldering books.

Sinyavsky, Andre

34.

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Erasmus, Desiderius

35.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

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

Dawkins, John

39.

Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman other or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.

Eagleton, Terry

40.

When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.

Geneen, Harold S.

41.

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

42.

The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.

Orwell, George

43.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.

Berger, John

44.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

45.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

46.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Eliot, George

47.

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

Hugo, Victor

48.

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

49.

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

Luther, Martin

50.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas