Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

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

Very young children eat their books, literally devouring their contents. This is one reason for the scarcity of first editions of Alice in Wonderland and other favorites of the nursery.

Rosenbach, A. S. W.

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought -- asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

Collier, Jeremy

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

Hunt, Leigh

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

The book you don't read won't help.

Rohn, Jim

Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.

Worsthorne, Sir Peregrine

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book --I call that vicious!

Nietzsche, Friedrich

10.

The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

11.

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

Jackson, Holbrook

12.

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

Forster, Edward M.

13.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

14.

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

Descartes, Rene

15.

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

16.

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

Mallarme, Stephane

17.

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

18.

A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.

Brooke, Rupert

19.

Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books. Quick, quick! Fling Peregrine Pickle under the toilette --throw Roderick Random into the closet --put The Innocent Adultery into The Whole Duty of Man; thrust Lord Aimworth under the sofa! cram Ovid behind the bolster; there --put The Man of Feeling into your pocket. Now for them.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

20.

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

Lee, Spike

21.

The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.

Leacock, Stephen B.

22.

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

Spielberg, Steven

23.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

24.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

25.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

26.

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

Tupper, Martin

27.

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

Pound, Ezra

28.

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

Hope, Anthony

29.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

30.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Kieran, John

31.

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

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.

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

Voltaire

34.

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

Carey, Joyce

35.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

36.

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

Dane, Frank

37.

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

Hadas, Moses

38.

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

39.

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

Mansfield, Katherine

40.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

42.

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

43.

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

Barrett, E.S.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

49.

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

50.

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

Ruskin, John