Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

- Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

Whipple, Edwin P.

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

Rohn, Jim

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.

Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.

Jackson, Holbrook

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

Frost, Robert

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

Faulkner, William

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

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

10.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Adler, Mortimer J.

11.

What is important is not to be able to read rapidly, but to be able to decide what not to read.

Mccay, James T.

12.

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

13.

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

Secondat, Charles de

14.

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

Critchfield, Jim

15.

The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.

Proverb, American

16.

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

17.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

18.

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

Gissing, George Robert

19.

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

20.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

21.

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

22.

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

Pound, Ezra

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

Kempis, Thomas

26.

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

27.

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

Descartes, Rene

28.

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.

29.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

30.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

31.

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

Joubert, Joseph

32.

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

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

33.

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

Chappell, Warren

34.

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

35.

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

Byron, Lord

36.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

37.

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

Temple, Sir William

38.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

39.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

40.

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

41.

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

42.

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

Ruskin, John

43.

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

Auden, W. H.

44.

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

45.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

46.

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Mansfield, Katherine

47.

In any situation, ask yourself: What strengths do I possess that can contribute towards accomplishing something in this situation? Then follow through.

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Marcel, Anthony