Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

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

Parker, Dorothy

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

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

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

Luther, Martin

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

Sandwell, B. K.

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

Harington, John

Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.

Channing, William Ellery

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

Marcel, Anthony

10.

Books succeed, and lives fail.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

11.

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

Tupper, Martin

12.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

13.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

Belloc, Hilaire

14.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

15.

Then I though of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

16.

After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else.

Lawrence, D. H.

17.

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

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

18.

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

Gibbon, Edward

19.

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

20.

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

21.

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

22.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

23.

The successful Accelerated Reader is able to read larger than normal blocks or bites of the printed page with each eye stop. He has accepted, without reservation, the philosophy that the most important benefit of reading is the gaining of information, ideas, mental picture and entertainment-not the fretting over words. He has come to the realization that words in and of themselves are for the most part insignificant.

Cutler, Wade E.

24.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

30.

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

Rochman, Hazel

31.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

32.

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead.

Day, Clarence

33.

Read Homer once, and you can read no more. For all books else appear so mean, and so poor. Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, and Homer will be all the books you need.

Buckingham, Duke of

34.

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

35.

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in it.

Byron, Lord

36.

A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.

Bradbury, Malcolm

37.

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

Wesley, John

38.

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

Wilde, Oscar

39.

Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.

Johnson

40.

Learning to read has been reduced to a process of mastering a series of narrow, specific, hierarchical skills. Where armed-forces recruits learn the components of a rifle or the intricacies of close order drill by the numbers, recruits to reading learn its mechanics sound by sound and word by word.

Gross, Jacquelyn

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.

Burgess, Anthony

45.

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

Hadas, Moses

46.

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

Ruskin, John

47.

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

Twain, Mark

48.

The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.