Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Phelps, William Lyon

Best Quotes about Books - reading

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

Howells, William Dean

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

Lawrence, D. H.

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

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

Marcel, Anthony

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

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

Goldsmith, Oliver

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

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

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

10.

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

11.

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.

12.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine -- everybody drinks water.

Twain, Mark

13.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

14.

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.

15.

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

Gibbon, Edward

16.

The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.

Luther, Martin

17.

A book is like a man -- clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

Steinbeck, John

18.

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

19.

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

Porter, Noah

20.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

21.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Brodsky, Joseph

22.

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in it.

Byron, Lord

23.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

Maclennan, Hugh

24.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

25.

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

26.

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

Bennett, Arnold

27.

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

28.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

29.

The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, The medicines of the soul.

Hood, Paxton

30.

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

Asimov, Isaac

31.

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

Morely, John

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

Seferis, Giorgos

35.

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

Colton, Charles Caleb

36.

A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.

Bradbury, Malcolm

37.

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

38.

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

Secondat, Charles de

39.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

40.

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

Wilde, Oscar

41.

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

Lowell, James Russell

42.

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

Hadas, Moses

43.

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.

44.

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.

Terry, Helen

45.

Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

Wesley, John

46.

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

Wolfe, Thomas

47.

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

48.

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

Barstow, Stan

49.

It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along the shore.

Fuller, Margaret

50.

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