Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Maugham, W. Somerset

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Lee, Harper

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

Temple, Sir William

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

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

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

Rostand, Jean

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

A book might be written on the injustice of the just.

Hope, Anthony

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

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

Morely, John

10.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

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.

The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy; The books that people talk about we never can recall; And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.

Wells, Carolyn

13.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

14.

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

Gibbon, Edward

15.

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.

Spielberg, Steven

16.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Camus, Albert

17.

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

Disraeli, Benjamin

18.

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality -- the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

Benson, Arthur Christopher

19.

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

20.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

21.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

Ruskin, John

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Barrett, E.S.

25.

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

Frost, Robert

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Lee, Spike

29.

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

30.

Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us -- never cease to instruct -- never cloy.

Colton, Charles Caleb

31.

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

32.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

Mccosh

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

36.

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

Whitman, Walt

37.

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

38.

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

39.

To read too many books is harmful.

Zedong, Mao

40.

It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.

Hunt, Leigh

41.

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

Carey, Joyce

42.

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

43.

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

Hugo, Victor

44.

The novel can't compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who's had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

45.

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

Rohn, Jim

46.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

47.

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

Critchfield, Jim

48.

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

Brodsky, Joseph

49.

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

50.

In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.

Rosten, Leo