Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

- Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

Butler, Samuel

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

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

Ruskin, John

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

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

Lowell, James Russell

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

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

Dawkins, John

10.

The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.

Brookner, Anita

11.

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

12.

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

13.

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.

Kirk, E.N.

14.

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

Mccay, James T.

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Hugo, Victor

18.

I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.

Phelps, William Lyon

19.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

20.

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

Hadas, Moses

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

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

24.

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

Tupper, Martin

25.

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

26.

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

27.

A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.

Murray, William

28.

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.

Porter, Noah

29.

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

Spielberg, Steven

30.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

31.

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Locke, John

32.

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from the dead -- from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

Kingsley, Charles

33.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.

Trevelyan, G. M.

34.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

Benjamin, Walter

35.

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

36.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

Huxley, Aldous

37.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

Thoreau, Henry David

38.

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

Kempis, Thomas

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.

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

41.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Asimov, Isaac

42.

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

Morely, John

43.

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

44.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.

Lamb, Charles

45.

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

Balfour, Arthur James

46.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch.

Steele, Sir Richard

47.

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

48.

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

Byron, Lord

49.

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

Ruskin, John

50.

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

Parker, Dorothy