Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet -- if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.

- Miller, Henry

Best Quotes about Books - reading

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

Hubbard, Elbert

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

The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.

Barstow, Stan

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, Lighthouses as the poet said erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

10.

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations -- such is pleasure beyond compare.

Kenko, Yoshida

11.

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

12.

The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.

Barrie, Sir James M.

13.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

14.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

15.

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

Ruskin, John

16.

I've never know any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Secondat, Charles de

17.

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

18.

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

Rochman, Hazel

19.

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

Townsend, Atwood H.

20.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

Marx, Groucho

21.

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

22.

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

23.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

Edwards, Tryon

24.

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

25.

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

Wycherley, William

26.

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

Frost, Robert

27.

What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.

Carlyle, Thomas

28.

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.

Joubert, Joseph

29.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

30.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

Lowell, James Russell

31.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

32.

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.

Lawrence, D. H.

33.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring

Chappell, Warren

34.

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

Morely, John

35.

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

Auden, W. H.

36.

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

37.

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

Mencken, H. L.

38.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

39.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

40.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

Thackeray, William M.

41.

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.

42.

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

Ruskin, John

43.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Mallarme, Stephane

44.

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

Hugo, Victor

45.

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

46.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

47.

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

Dane, Frank

48.

Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use.

Blackie, Professor

49.

You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.

Kump, Peter

50.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Johnson, Samuel