Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

- Penn, William

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things -- the teacher of all truth.

Kingsley, Charles

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

Hunt, Leigh

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

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

Secondat, Charles de

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

Twain, Mark

Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.

Morely, John

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

10.

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

11.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

McKenna, Richard

12.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

13.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

14.

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

15.

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

Asimov, Isaac

16.

To read too many books is harmful.

Zedong, Mao

17.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

18.

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

19.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

Mccosh

20.

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

21.

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

Mansfield, Katherine

22.

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

Butler, Samuel

23.

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Fuller, Margaret

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing.

Miller, Henry

28.

Everything in this book may be wrong. [The Savior's Manual]

Bach, Richard

29.

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

Barstow, Stan

30.

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

31.

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

32.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

33.

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

Hugo, Victor

34.

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.

Fadiman, Clifton

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Murray, William

38.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

39.

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

Ruskin, John

40.

Books in a large university library system: 2, 000,000. Books in an average large city library: 1 0,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30, 000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20, 000.

Horowitz, Lois

41.

Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

42.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

43.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Kieran, John

44.

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

Pascal, Blaise

45.

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

Locke, John

46.

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

47.

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

Dane, Frank

48.

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

Gibbon, Edward

49.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

50.

A good book is the very essence of a good man. His virtues survive in it, while the foibles and faults of his actual life are forgotten. All the goodly company of the excellent and great sit around my table, or look down on me from yonder shelves, waiting patiently to answer my questions and enrich me with their wisdom. A precious book is a foretaste of immortality.

Cuyler, Theodore L.